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Beef Stew with Dumplings

A hearty beef stew simmered with onions, parsley, and dumplings made from flour, baking powder, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Beef Stew with Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Dredge the meat in flour and brown it in a frying pan with drippings or butter.

  2. Remove the browned meat and add water and flour to the remaining fat in the pan.

  3. Return the meat, onion, and parsley to the pan, cover, and simmer for 2 hours.

  4. If needed, add a little water to the stew for gravy.

Add dumplings and serve

  1. For the dumplings, mix flour and baking powder, then add enough milk to form a soft dough.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of dumpling dough on top of the stew, cover, and simmer for 10 minutes.

  3. Serve immediately without uncovering until the dumplings are done.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Lean meat from the shoulder
Becomes tender during long simmering, giving the stew its main body and flavor.
Flour
Coats the meat for browning and, cooked into the fat, thickens the gravy.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the dumplings rise and turn light.

The step that matters

Drop spoonfuls of dumpling dough on top of the stew, cover, and simmer for 10 minutes.. The dumplings must steam on top of simmering liquid with the lid on. Lifting the lid lets steam escape, so the dumplings may cook unevenly or stay dense.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, flour, butter, onion, milk. 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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