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Beef Stew

A hearty stew of beef, onions, turnip, carrot, potato, and flour simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Season 1 tablespoon of meat with salt and pepper.

  2. Roll the seasoned meat in flour.

  3. Brown the floured meat in beef fat.

  4. Soak the remaining meat in water for 30 minutes.

Cook the stew

  1. Cook the soaked meat slowly in a covered saucepan for 1.5 hours.

  2. Add the vegetables after 45 minutes of cooking.

  3. Moisten the flour with a little cold water.

  4. Add the moistened flour along with the potato 20 minutes before the stew is done.

  5. Ensure all vegetables are cooked until soft.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Forms the main body of the stew and becomes tender through slow, covered cooking.
Flour
Coats the browned meat and, once moistened, thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy.
Potato
Adds starch and body to the stew while softening during cooking.

The step that matters

Add the moistened flour near the end. Flour added as a dry powder clumps and stays grainy. Mixing it with cold water first spreads the starch evenly, so it thickens the liquid smoothly when added late in cooking.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, turnip, carrot, potato, pepper, flour):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, 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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