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Hot Meat Stew, with Garnish

A stew of cold meats, onions, tomatoes, and flour, seasoned with mustard or curry powder, served hot with optional rice, potatoes, or corn.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Hot Meat Stew, with Garnish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Combine the cold meats, broth or cold water, and chopped onions in a large pan.

  2. Add the can of tomatoes and stir slowly for 1 to 2 hours, seasoning to taste.

  3. Mix the flour with the mustard or curry powder in a bowl, then stir this mixture into the stew.

  4. Boil for an additional 10 minutes and serve hot.

Garnish

  1. Garnish with rice, boiled or mashed potatoes, or corn.

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 + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 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

Cold meats
Provide the main body and protein of the stew, cut into equal pieces so they cook evenly.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth as they soften into the stew.
Flour
Thickens the stew as it is stirred in and heated, giving it body.
Mustard or curry powder
Adds sharp, aromatic flavor that gives the stew its character.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and moisture, rounding out the flavor of the stew.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour mixture into the stew. Flour clumps if added dry or unevenly. Mixing it with the spice first and stirring it in well lets it disperse and thicken the stew smoothly.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, onion, flour, mustard, pepper, rice):

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, onion, flour, mustard, pepper, rice. 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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