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Beef Stew

A hearty stew of beef cubes simmered with peppercorns, bay leaf, garlic, onions, and potatoes, finished with optional dumplings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef Stew

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Brown and simmer

  1. Heat some fat in a frying pan until very hot and brown half of the meat quickly until caramel brown.

  2. Transfer all the meat to an enameled or aluminum stew pot and just cover with boiling water, adding rinsings from the frying pan.

  3. For each pound of meat, add 3 peppercorns, ½ bay leaf, and 1 clove.

  4. Boil for 5 minutes, then simmer slowly for 2 to 3 hours until the meat is tender.

Finish the stew

  1. If desired, add ½ sliced onion about 30 minutes before it is done.

  2. Remove bones, most of the fat, and skin, then add salt, pepper, and potato slices.

  3. Ensure the liquid does not quite cover the ingredients.

Dumplings and gravy

  1. Make dumplings and cook for 7 minutes, placing the batter on top of the meat and potatoes, not in the liquid.

  2. If desired, thicken the gravy after removing dumplings by stirring in a heaping teaspoon of flour mixed with a little 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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  4. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 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 chuck or neck
Slow simmering breaks down connective tissue, making the meat tender and the broth rich.
Potatoes
Their starch softens during cooking, giving the stew body and a soft, hearty texture.
Flour
Its starch swells in the hot liquid, thickening the gravy when stirred in.

The step that matters

Place the dumpling batter on top, not in the liquid. Keeping the batter above the liquid lets it steam rather than boil, so the dumplings cook through and stay light instead of turning soggy.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, meat, clove, pepper, potato, flour):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, meat, clove, pepper, potato, 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.

More beef stew recipes

with Dumplings 30Brazilian 20French 20Spiced 17Pudding 16English 15 See all 357 →

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