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To Stew Beef

A slow‑cooked beef stew with carrots, celery, onions, herbs, and optional wine and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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 ↓

To Stew Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Simmer the beef

  1. Place the beef in a pot and cover it with cold water.

  2. Bring the pot to a boil.

  3. Simmer for 3-4 hours.

  4. Add diced carrots, celery, sweet herbs, peppercorns, mace, and onions to the pot.

  5. Simmer for an additional 2-3 hours.

  6. Skim off any grease.

  7. Remove the onions from the pot.

  8. Mince the onions.

  9. Fry the minced onions in butter.

Finish the gravy

  1. Mix the fried onions into the gravy from the pot.

  2. Season the gravy with salt and cayenne or chili vinegar.

  3. Add mushroom or walnut ketchup.

  4. Thicken the gravy with flour.

  5. Brown the gravy with burnt sugar.

  6. Add port wine.

  7. Add curry powder.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Long simmering breaks down connective tissue, making the meat tender and giving the gravy body.
Onions
Frying them in butter softens and sweetens them, adding savory depth to the gravy.
Flour
Starch granules swell when heated in liquid, thickening the gravy.
Sugar
Burnt sugar adds a deep brown color and a slightly bitter caramel flavor to the gravy.
Carrots
Slow cooking releases their natural sweetness and body into the broth.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with flour. Flour must be cooked in hot liquid long enough for its starch to swell and thicken evenly; added too fast or unmixed, it forms lumps and leaves a raw, pasty taste.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, meat, carrot, celery, mace, onion, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, meat, carrot, celery, mace, onion, butter. 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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