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Beef Stew

A stew of cold beef simmered with tomato, onion, thyme, salt, pepper, thickened with butter and flour, served over toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,585 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Beef Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the cold beef in a pot and cover with cold water.

  2. Add the tomato, chopped onion, thyme, salt, and pepper.

Cook and thicken

  1. Cook slowly until the beef is tender.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the butter and flour to create a paste.

  3. Stir the paste into the stew to thicken it.

Serve

  1. Serve the stew over toast.

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. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Tomato + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 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

Beef
Slow cooking breaks down connective tissue, making the meat tender and rich in flavor.
Butter and flour
Flour thickens the stew's liquid into a richer body, and butter adds fat and smoothness to the paste.
Onion
Softens during slow cooking and adds savory aromatic depth to the broth.
Tomato
Adds acidity and a fresh, savory note that balances the rich beef.

The step that matters

Stir the butter-flour paste into the stew. Flour clumps if added raw to liquid. Mixing it with butter first forms a paste that disperses evenly, so the stew thickens smoothly instead of becoming lumpy.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, thyme, pepper, butter, flour):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, thyme, pepper, butter, 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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