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Beef Stew

A hearty stew of beef, onions, cloves, allspice, and water, thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Beef Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter and fry the sliced onions until brown.

  2. Add the cloves, allspice, salt, and black pepper while cooking.

  3. Remove from heat and pour in the cold water.

  4. Add the beef pieces and cover tightly.

  5. Let it stew gently for 2 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, add a little flour to thicken.

  2. Garnish with sprigs of sweet basil if desired.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + basiltop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Clove + basiltop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Allspice + basiltop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together195 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Becomes tender through long gentle stewing, adding substance and savory flavor to the dish.
Onions
Browning in butter builds sweetness and savory depth into the broth.
Flour
Starch that thickens the cooking liquid into a looser gravy.
Butter
Fat that carries the onion browning and adds richness.

The step that matters

Adding the flour just before serving. Flour thickens by absorbing liquid and swelling when heated; added too early or in a lump it can clump or cook into the broth unevenly, so stir it in a little at a time while the stew is hot.

Swap the basil

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Basilthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, clove, allspice, pepper, beef, 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.

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