Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓
Stewed Beef
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the beef
Pound the beef until tender.
Line an iron vessel with slices of pork and onions, and add peppercorns.
Dredge the beef with coarse sea salt and baste with melted butter.
Cook
Cover tightly and cook over medium heat until browned.
Add the cooking wine and enough soup stock to cover the meat, then stew until soft.
Make the sauce and serve
Remove the meat and skim off the fat from the liquid.
Mix the flour with some broth until smooth, then gradually add more broth.
Strain the sauce through a sieve and pour it over the meat before serving.
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.
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Beef + porktop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,690 recipes
Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).
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Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together17,092 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together18,214 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together13,933 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
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
- Rump beef
- Pounding and long stewing soften its tough muscle fibers into tender meat.
- Melted butter
- Basting adds fat that carries flavour and helps the surface brown.
- German cooking wine
- Adds acidity and aroma to the braising liquid, deepening the flavour of the sauce.
- Soup stock
- Forms the moist cooking liquid that gently braises the meat and becomes the sauce.
- Flour
- Thickens the strained cooking liquid into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
The step that matters
Cook over medium heat until browned, then stew until soft. Browning the covered meat builds flavour on its surface, but too much heat can toughen and dry the beef before the slow stew softens it. Keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer lets collagen break down gradually.
Swap the onion
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, butter, wine, flour):
- Potatofits better
- Shallotfits about as well
- Tomatofits about as well
- Onionthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, butter, wine, 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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