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Beef Stew

A hearty stew of beef, onions, carrots, turnips, and potatoes simmered with flour and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Remove the fat from the beef.

  2. Cut the beef into 1‑inch pieces.

  3. Soak the meat and bone in cold water for 1 hour.

  4. Heat the water until it bubbles.

  5. Season the meat with salt and pepper.

  6. Roll the meat in flour.

Brown the meat and onions

  1. Melt fat in a frying pan.

  2. Remove scraps from the pan.

  3. Brown the sliced onions.

  4. Add the floured meat to the pan.

  5. Transfer the meat and onions to the stew pot.

Simmer and serve

  1. Cook for 2 hours at a simmering point.

  2. Add the diced carrots, turnips, and potatoes.

  3. Add the flour mixed with 1/2 cup cold water.

  4. Cook for 1 hour or until the meat and vegetables are tender.

  5. Remove the bone.

  6. Season the stew and serve.

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
Long, gentle cooking breaks down the connective tissue, making the meat tender and juicy.
Flour
Coats the meat and later thickens the cooking liquid into a stew sauce.
Onions
Browning them adds sweetness and a deeper savory aroma to the stew.
Potatoes
Their starch softens during cooking and helps give the stew body.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and color while softening in the simmering liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer gently instead of boiling. A gentle simmer lets collagen in the beef break down slowly. A hard boil toughens the muscle fibers and can leave the meat chewy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, potato, 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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