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Spanish Stew

A stew of meat, onions, and dried red peppers finished with sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Spanish Stew

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peppers

  1. Wash the dried red peppers, remove seeds, core, and veins.

  2. Place the peppers in a small pan, cover with cold water, and cook slowly on the back of the stove.

  3. About an hour before serving, strain the peppers and rub through a sieve to create a red gravy-like liquid.

Make the stew

  1. Cook the stew meat slowly until well done.

  2. Heat a frying pan and brown the sliced onion in equal parts butter and drippings.

  3. Add the cooked meat to the pan, stir well, and add flour to brown.

  4. Pour in the pepper gravy and meat liquid, and cook slowly until ready to serve.

  5. Add the sweet cream just before serving.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Dried red peppers
Provide the red colour and the main pepper flavour of the gravy once strained and sieved.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour while browning the onion.
Drippings
Add savoury meaty flavour and fat for browning the onion and meat.
Flour
Browns with the meat and fat and thickens the liquid into a gravy.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and a mild sweetness, stirred in at the end so it stays fresh.

The step that matters

Adding the sweet cream. Cream held at a simmer for long can curdle or separate, so it is added just before serving. Keeping it off the heat until the end preserves its smooth texture and fresh dairy flavour.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pepper, butter, flour, cream):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, butter, flour, cream. 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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