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Brunswick Stew

A hearty stew of squirrel, beans, corn, potatoes, and pork, simmered with onions, tomatoes, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Brunswick Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Add salt to water and boil for 5 minutes.

Stew

  1. Add onion, beans, corn, salt pork, potatoes, pepper, and squirrels.

  2. Cover and stew for 2 hours.

  3. Add sugar and tomatoes, then stew for 1 more hour.

  4. Ten minutes before finishing, add butter pieces.

  5. Boil again, adjusting salt and pepper as needed.

  6. Serve in soup plates.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Corn + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

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

  4. Potato + porktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Corn + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Squirrels
Provide the meat that becomes tender during the long, slow stew.
Butter beans or lima beans
Add starch and body, thickening the stew as they cook and soften.
Potatoes
Break down slightly as they cook, adding body and thickening the broth.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and flavor, giving the stew its tangy base.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel when stirred in near the end.
Salt pork
Adds savory fat and smoky, meaty flavor to the broth.

The step that matters

Adding the butter ten minutes before finishing. Butter is mostly fat and water, so it should be stirred in near the end and kept at a gentle boil. Boiling it hard for a long time can split the emulsion and leave the broth greasy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, corn, potato, pork, pepper, sugar, tomato):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, corn, potato, pork, pepper, sugar, tomato. 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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