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Stewed Beef

A stew of steak and bacon simmered with water, sherry, and onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stewed Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Melt the butter in a stew pan over medium heat.

  2. Add the steak and bacon; turn occasionally until the steak is slightly browned.

  3. Remove the steak to a dish.

  4. Stir in the flour with the remaining butter in the pan until browned.

Simmer

  1. Return the steak to the pan and add water, sherry, pepper, and salt.

  2. Simmer slowly for 1 hour.

  3. Skim off the fat and add the button onions.

  4. Simmer until the onions are very tender.

Serve

  1. Transfer the steak to a hot platter and pour the onions and sauce over it.

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 + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Steak
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender during slow simmering.
Butter
Carries the browning of the steak and bacon and adds richness to the pan.
Bacon
Renders fat and flavor into the pan that seasons the stew.
Flour
Browned in the fat to thicken the cooking liquid into a sauce.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma to the sauce as it simmers.
Button onions
Soften during simmering and add sweetness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour until browned. Flour cooked in fat until browned develops a nutty flavor and color and thickens the sauce more evenly. Stopping too early leaves a raw, pasty taste, while cooking too long can scorch it and turn the sauce bitter.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sherry, 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.

More stewed beef recipes

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