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A Cood English Stew

A stew of beef simmered with broth, lemon rind, rice flour, mushroom catsup, lemon juice, soy sauce, and optional wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

A Cood English Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Combine the beef and broth in a pot and bring to a boil.

  2. Add salt and cayenne pepper.

  3. Reduce heat to simmer for 2 hours.

  4. Stir in the grated lemon rind and simmer for another 30 minutes.

  5. Mix rice flour with mushroom catsup, lemon juice, and soy sauce, then add the mixture to the pot.

  6. Cook for an additional 15 minutes until ready to serve.

Finish and serve

  1. Incorporate port or white wine before serving.

  2. Optionally add fried forcemeat balls 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  4. Rice + mushroomtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,515 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 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

Rump of beef
Long simmering breaks down connective tissue, leaving the meat tender and rich.
Rice flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light, smooth gravy as it simmers.
Mushroom catsup
Adds deep savoury, umami flavour to the broth.
Lemon rind
Its aromatic oils add bright citrus fragrance that lifts the rich stew.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the beef.

The step that matters

Adding the rice flour mixture. Flour must be fully mixed into the catsup, lemon juice and soy sauce before it goes into the pot, otherwise it clumps and thickens unevenly in the hot liquid.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, rice, flour, mushroom, sauce, white wine):

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Mangofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, rice, flour, mushroom, sauce, white wine. 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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