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An Old Virginia Recipe for Brunswick Stew

A stew of squirrel, beans, corn, potatoes, tomatoes, and butter, simmered slowly with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

An Old Virginia Recipe for Brunswick Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. In a large pot, bring the water and salt to a boil for 5 minutes.

  2. Add the onions, beans, corn, and potatoes to the pot.

  3. Soak the squirrels in cold water to draw out the blood, then add them to the pot.

  4. Cover the pot and simmer slowly for 2½ hours, stirring frequently.

  5. After 2½ hours, add the tomatoes and sugar, and continue to simmer for 1 hour.

Finish and serve

  1. Ten minutes before serving, add the butter pieces rolled in flour.

  2. Bring to a final boil and serve for dinner.

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. Tomato + beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Beans + corntop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Potato + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Beans + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together655 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Squirrels
Provide the meat that gives the stew its main body and savory flavor.
Butter beans
Add starchy body and a creamy texture as they soften during simmering.
Potatoes
Break down slightly during simmering, thickening the stew and adding substance.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and liquid that balance the richness and build the stew's base flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel when rolled in flour and stirred in at the end.
Green corn
Adds sweetness and fresh texture to the stew.

The step that matters

Adding the flour-rolled butter. Butter rolled in flour is stirred in near the end so the flour can thicken the liquid as it heats. Adding it too early or letting the stew boil hard can break the emulsion and leave greasy patches.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, butter, beans, potato, corn, pepper, sugar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, butter, beans, potato, corn, pepper, sugar. 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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