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To Stew Beef

A simple beef stew simmered with potatoes, parsnips, and optional turnips, seasoned with coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsnip and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 590 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Stew Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the beef and rub it with salt.

  2. Place the beef in a pot and cover it with water.

Stew

  1. Set the pot over a slow fire and stew for 1 hour.

  2. Add the potatoes and parsnips to the pot.

  3. Continue to stew until the meat and vegetables are tender, turning the meat several times.

Serve

  1. Serve the meat and vegetables together, with the gravy skimmed and served in a separate dish.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parsnip + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Potato + parsniptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together353 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Potato + turniptop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Beef + turniptop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,940 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main protein and rich meaty flavor as it slowly softens in the liquid.
Potatoes
Absorb the savory cooking liquid and turn soft and starchy, thickening the gravy slightly.
Parsnips
Add natural sweetness that balances the salty, savory beef broth.

The step that matters

Stewing slowly until tender. Tough cuts of meat need long, gentle simmering so collagen breaks down into gelatin, making the meat tender. A fast boil toughens the fibers and leaves the meat chewy.

Swap the turnip

The recipe marks turnip as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, potato, parsnip):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Beetrootfits about as well
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, potato, parsnip. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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