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Economical Stew

A stew of beef or mutton with onions and potatoes, seasoned with pepper, salt, and flour, cooked gently in gravy or water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Economical Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Slice the cold beef or mutton and season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  2. Dredge the meat with a little flour.

Stew

  1. Place the meat in a stew pan with cold gravy or a little water.

  2. Add the finely sliced onion and a few potatoes.

  3. Stew gently until the meat is tender.

  4. If no gravy was used, add a little butter rolled in flour a few minutes before serving.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

Flour
Dredging the meat helps thicken the stew liquid as it cooks.
Butter
Rolled in flour and added near the end, it enriches and thickens the stew when no gravy is used.
Potatoes
Break down slightly as they stew, adding body and starch to the liquid.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Chivefits about as well
  2. Onionthe original
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Carrotfits about as well

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