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Brunswick Stew

A hearty stew of chicken, bacon, tomatoes, corn, cabbage, potatoes, beans, and other vegetables simmered for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Brunswick Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a soup kettle, combine the soup bone, boiling bacon, and chicken pieces.

  2. Add enough water to cover the ingredients and bring to a boil.

  3. Reduce heat and let simmer slowly for 2 hours.

Add the vegetables and finish

  1. Stir in the mashed tomatoes and add the corn, cabbage, potatoes, onion, butter beans, okra, celery, macaroni, and turnip.

  2. Season with red and black pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

  3. Cook until the vegetables are tender.

  4. Remove the bone before serving hot.

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. Tomato + beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  2. Corn + beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  4. Corn + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Potato + beanstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together655 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Boiling bacon
Adds smoky, savory fat and flavor to the broth as it simmers.
Butter beans
Add starch and body, thickening the stew as they cook and soften.
Potatoes
Break down partly during cooking, adding starch that thickens the stew.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body, giving the stew its tangy, rich base.
Macaroni
Absorbs liquid and adds starch, giving the stew a heartier texture.
Corn
Adds natural sweetness and a fresh, tender bite to the stew.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly for 2 hours before adding the vegetables. A slow simmer gently extracts flavor and gelatin from the bone and meat, building a rich broth. A rolling boil would toughen the meat and cloud the broth.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, tomato, corn, potato, onion, butter, beans):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, tomato, corn, potato, onion, butter, beans. 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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