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Stewed Beefsteak with Carrots

A slow-cooked beef stew with carrots, onions, and spices, finished with optional flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Stewed Beefsteak with Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the beef

  1. Cut the beefsteak into pieces 3 to 4 inches square.

  2. Sauté the beef in a large frying pan with butter and the chopped onion.

  3. Turn the meat occasionally until browned on both sides.

Simmer the stew

  1. Fill the pan with hot water to cover the meat.

  2. Add salt, pepper, and ground cloves.

  3. Add the sliced carrots.

  4. Cover the pan and cook gently on the side of the stove for 2 to 3 hours until tender.

  5. If desired, thicken the gravy with flour mixed with a little cold water.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Beefsteak from the round
Becomes tender during long gentle cooking, providing the main body of the stew.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it cooks, adding savory depth to the gravy.
Carrots
Add sweetness and earthy flavor while holding their shape in the simmering liquid.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy when mixed with cold water first.

The step that matters

Browning the beef on both sides. Browning creates deep flavor through the Maillard reaction. Crowding the pan or stirring too little steams the meat instead, leaving the gravy flat and gray-looking.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, clove, carrot, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, clove, carrot, 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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