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Beef, Stewed Shin of

A slow‑cooked stew of beef shin with celery, onion, carrots, turnips, and a butter‑flour gravy flavored with mushroom ketchup and port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Beef, Stewed Shin of

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Saw the bone into 4 or 5 pieces and cover with hot water.

  2. Bring to a boil and remove any scum that rises to the surface.

  3. Add the celery, onion, herbs, spices, and seasoning, then simmer gently until the meat is tender.

Cook the vegetables

  1. Peel the vegetables, cut them into desired shapes, and boil with the onions until tender.

Make the gravy

  1. Remove the beef and keep it warm on a dish.

  2. Thicken the cooking liquid with butter and flour for gravy, stirring until it boils, then strain and skim.

  3. Return the gravy to the pot, add seasoning, port wine, and ketchup, and bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. Pour the gravy over the beef and garnish with boiled carrots, turnips, and onions.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Shin of beef
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and rich through long, gentle simmering.
Butter and flour
Thicken the cooking liquid into a smooth gravy that coats the meat.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds deep savoury flavour and umami to the gravy.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the finished gravy.

The step that matters

Simmering the beef gently until tender. A rolling boil toughens the meat's muscle fibres and can leave it dry and stringy. Gentle simmering lets collagen slowly break down into gelatin, which makes the meat tender and enriches the liquid.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, celery, onion, pepper, carrot, turnip, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, celery, onion, pepper, carrot, turnip, 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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