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Brazilian Stew

A hearty beef stew with carrots, turnips, onions, herbs, and vinegar, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Brazilian Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut all the meat off the bone and into neat pieces.

  2. Dip each piece of meat into the vinegar to tenderize it.

  3. Wash, scrape, and slice the carrots.

  4. Peel and slice the turnips and onions.

Cook

  1. Place the meat in a saucepan, arranging it closely together.

  2. Sprinkle pepper and salt over the meat.

  3. Add the sliced vegetables and the bunch of herbs.

  4. Cover the saucepan tightly and simmer gently for at least three hours.

  5. Serve the stew on a hot dish or in a soup tureen.

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. Marjoram + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Marjoram + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Shin or sticking beef
Slow simmering breaks down tough connective tissue, making the meat tender and rich.
Vinegar
Its acidity helps tenderize the surface of the meat before cooking.
Carrots
They add natural sweetness and body to the stew as they soften.
Onions
They soften and sweeten as they cook, building savoury depth in the broth.

The step that matters

Simmering gently with the lid on. Tough shin meat needs long, low, moist heat so collagen converts to gelatin. Boiling hard toughens muscle fibres and can make the meat stringy, so keep the heat low.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, marjoram, thyme, parsley, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, marjoram, thyme, parsley, 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.

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