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French Stew

A simple beef stew with carrots, onions, and water, seasoned with pepper and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

French Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the beef

  1. Grease the bottom of an iron pot.

  2. Add the beef and brown it carefully, turning to prevent burning.

  3. Place a muffin ring under the beef to prevent sticking.

Stew

  1. Add the sliced carrots, onions, and hot water.

  2. Cover and stew slowly until the vegetables are tender.

  3. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  4. For more gravy, add hot water and thicken with flour if desired.

Serve

  1. Serve the stew on a dish with the vegetables.

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 + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Beef + carrottop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,606 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main body of the stew and, once browned, adds savory flavor.
Carrots
Soften during slow stewing and add sweetness and body to the gravy.
Onions
Soften during stewing and add savory depth to the cooking liquid.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a richer gravy when added.

The step that matters

Brown the beef carefully, turning often. Browning builds deep flavor through the Maillard reaction, but meat left too long on one spot can scorch and turn bitter. Turning keeps the browning even and the pot's bottom clean for the gravy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, pepper, flour):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, pepper, 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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