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Stewed Beef

A slow‑cooked beef stew with water, broth, vinegar, herbs, onions, and a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,979 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Stewed Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Marinate

  1. Place the beef in a deep kettle with water, broth, vinegar, parsley, cloves, marjoram, salt, and pepper.

  2. Let the beef marinate overnight, turning the meat several times if it is warm.

Simmer and thicken

  1. The next day, simmer the mixture for 4 to 5 hours.

  2. Add the chopped onions during the last hour of cooking.

  3. If more liquid is needed while stewing, add broth, gravy, or water.

  4. Remove the meat from the kettle.

  5. Mix butter with flour into the strained liquid.

  6. Add a dash of mushroom ketchup to the sauce.

  7. Pour the sauce over the meat 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. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Clove + marjoramtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Marjoram + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Round beef
Provides the main body of the stew, becoming tender through long, slow simmering.
Vinegar
Its acidity helps tenderise the meat during the overnight marinade.
Onions
Soften during the final hour and add sweetness and body to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the strained liquid into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce, rounding out its flavour.

The step that matters

Simmering the beef for 4 to 5 hours. Beef round is a tough cut with dense connective tissue. Long, gentle simmering at low heat slowly converts collagen into gelatin, which makes the meat tender. Boiling hard can toughen the fibres and dry the surface, so the liquid should stay at a bare simmer.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, vinegar, parsley, clove, marjoram, pepper, butter):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, vinegar, parsley, clove, marjoram, pepper, butter. 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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