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English Beef Stew

A stew of beef, onions, carrot, turnip, celery, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

English Beef Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the flank piece of beef into pieces.

Brown and simmer

  1. Fry the beef pieces until nicely browned.

  2. Stir in flour and enough beef stock to cover the meat.

  3. Add the chopped onions, carrot, turnip, and celery.

  4. Boil for about three hours.

  5. Thicken the stew further if desired and season with salt and pepper.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Flank piece of beef
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long simmering while its browned surface adds savory flavor.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a richer stew body as it heats.
Beef stock
Forms the cooking liquid that moistens the meat and vegetables during the long simmer.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften into the stew.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body to the stew as it cooks.
Turnip
Adds mild sweetness and soft texture to the stew as it cooks.

The step that matters

Fry the beef pieces until nicely browned.. Browning meat through the Maillard reaction creates deep savory flavors that the long boil alone cannot produce, so the pieces should be seared in batches rather than crowded, which would steam them grey.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, carrot, turnip, celery, pepper. 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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