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Breakfast Stew

A hearty stew of beef, water, flour, and chili sauce, served with toast or fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Breakfast Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut the beef into small pieces.

  2. Heat the beef with water and chili sauce.

  3. Add salt and pepper.

Make the gravy

  1. Mix butter and flour until smooth.

  2. Combine with a little gravy.

  3. Pour over the beef.

  4. Cook.

  5. Fry sliced onions.

  6. Add to the gravy before the meat.

  7. Omit chili sauce.

  8. Make gravy from stock.

  9. Add fried onions.

  10. Add salt, pepper, and catsup.

  11. Let it boil.

  12. Cool the gravy.

  13. Add thin slices of cold meat and potatoes.

  14. Heat gradually until boiling.

Serve

  1. Serve with bits of dry toast.

  2. Serve with diced fried bread.

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

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

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

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

Flour
Thickens the gravy so it becomes smooth and cohesive when mixed with butter.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the gravy base made with flour.
Beef (in the method)
Provides the main meat, which is cooked in the gravy until tender.

The step that matters

Mix butter and flour until smooth. Flour lumps form if it is not blended fully into the butter before liquid is added, leaving an uneven gravy texture.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, pepper, sauce, butter, meat, potato, bread):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper, sauce, butter, meat, potato, bread. 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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