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Stewed Beef

A slow‑cooked beef dish with bacon, onions, sherry, and seasonings.

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

Brown the beef

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

  2. Add the steak and bacon; brown the steak on all sides.

  3. Remove the steak to a dish.

  4. Stir in the flour with the remaining butter 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
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow simmering.
Butter
Carries the browning of the meat and the flour, adding richness to the sauce.
Bacon
Adds smoky, savory fat that flavors the braising liquid.
Flour
Browned in butter, it thickens the sauce and adds toasty flavor.
Sherry
Adds acidity and sweet, aromatic depth to the sauce.
Button onions
Turn very tender and sweet as they simmer in the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the steak on all sides. Browning creates deep flavor through the Maillard reaction. If the meat is crowded or the pan is not hot enough, it steams gray instead, and the sauce loses depth.

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

Steaks 20Steak 9Tongue 6Kidney 5Loin 3Shin 3 See all 14 →

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