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Cold Beef with Potatoes

A stew of cold beef, potatoes, and seasonings simmered in a gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cold Beef with Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat and bones

  1. Remove the meat from the bones.

  2. Cut the meat into small pieces.

  3. Crack the bones.

Make the gravy

  1. Place the bones in a saucepan with salt, covering them with cold water.

  2. Simmer until the water is reduced by half.

  3. Strain the bones from the gravy.

Finish and serve

  1. Season the meat with pepper, salt, and mace if desired.

  2. Add the seasoned meat to the gravy in the saucepan.

  3. Peel and slice the potatoes.

  4. Add the potatoes to the stew.

  5. Cook until the potatoes are tender.

  6. Serve the stew with toasted bread squares at the bottom of the dish.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 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 + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold beef
Provides the meat that becomes tender in the stew and flavours the gravy.
Raw potatoes
Add starch that thickens the stew slightly and gives it body as they cook.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the gravy and add texture when toasted and placed at the bottom of the dish.

The step that matters

Simmer until the water is reduced by half. Reducing the water concentrates the flavour of the bones and salt into the gravy. Stopping too early leaves it thin and weak, while over-reducing makes it too salty and intense.

Swap the mace

The recipe marks mace as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, potato, butter, bread):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, potato, butter, bread. 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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