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Beef Stew with Dumplings

A hearty beef stew thickened with flour, served with dumplings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Beef Stew with Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut off fat from any leftover broiled, fried, or roast beef.

  2. Reserve half the meat.

  3. In a kettle, place the bones and half the meat, cover with cold water.

  4. Melt the fat.

  5. Dredge the remaining meat with salt, pepper, and flour.

  6. Fry the meat until brown. Brown the onions.

  7. Add the meat and onions to the kettle, covering with boiling water.

Simmer the stew

  1. Simmer until the meat is tender, about 2 to 3 hours.

  2. Half an hour before serving, remove the fat and bones.

  3. Add the turnips, carrots, and potatoes.

  4. Mix flour with a little cold water. Stir the mixture into the stew before serving.

Make and cook the dumplings

  1. If making dumplings, do not thicken the stew.

  2. Sift together flour, salt, and baking powder. Add milk and stir minimally.

  3. Drop spoonfuls of the dumpling mixture into the boiling stew. Cover tightly.

  4. Cook for 10 minutes without lifting the lid. Serve immediately.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 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 rich meaty flavour and, when simmered long, becomes tender.
Flour
Browns the meat when dredged and thickens the stew liquid.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dumpling batter so the dumplings rise and turn light.
Milk
Moistens the dumpling flour into a soft batter that cooks into tender dough.
Potatoes
Absorb stew flavour and add starch that gives body to the broth.

The step that matters

Keep the lid on while the dumplings cook. Lifting the lid lets steam escape, so the tops of the dumplings can dry and the dumplings may cook unevenly and turn out heavy. Trapped steam cooks them through and helps them rise.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, potato, pepper, flour, milk. 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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