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Beef Stew with Dumplings

A hearty beef stew simmered with onions, turnips, carrots, potatoes, and dumplings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Beef Stew with Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Braise the stew

  1. Select a nice piece of stewing beef.

  2. Brown the beef slightly in drippings in a hot skillet.

  3. Place the beef in a kettle.

  4. Cover with water.

  5. Add the chopped onions, turnips, and carrots.

  6. Cook for 3 hours.

  7. Add the soaked potatoes along with salt and pepper to taste.

  8. Ensure the liquid covers the ingredients.

Add dumplings and serve

  1. Add the dumplings just before the potatoes are done.

  2. Cover tightly.

  3. Boil the dumplings for 10 minutes without lifting the lid.

  4. Remove the dumplings.

  5. Take out the vegetables and meat onto a hot platter.

  6. Place the dumplings around the edge of the platter.

  7. Remove excess fat from the cooking liquid.

  8. Thicken the liquid with flour smoothed in butter or cold water and boil.

  9. Pour the thickened gravy over the stew.

  10. Serve extra gravy in a separate dish.

Make the dumplings

  1. Mix the flour, baking powder, milk, and salt to form a soft dough for the dumplings.

  2. Pat out the dough.

  3. Cut into small rounds or drop spoonfuls into the stew.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

  4. Orange + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together737 recipes

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

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Stewing beef
Collagen breaks down slowly during long cooking, making the meat tender and enriching the broth.
Flour
Starch swells in the hot liquid and thickens the gravy.
Butter
Fat smoothed with the flour adds richness and helps the thickening spread evenly.
Onions
Cooking softens them and releases sweetness and aroma into the broth.
Baking powder
Releases gas when moistened and heated, lifting the dumplings so they stay light.
Milk
Adds moisture and tenderness to the dumpling dough.

The step that matters

Boil the dumplings without lifting the lid. Lifting the lid lets steam escape, so the temperature drops and the dumplings can turn heavy or doughy. Keeping the pot covered holds in steam so they cook through and rise.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, turnip, carrot, potato, pepper, flour. 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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