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Scotch Stew

A simple stew of round steak simmered for hours, finished with butter, pepper, salt, and a red pepper pod.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85,593 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Scotch Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Pass the trimmed round steak through a meat chopper.

Stew

  1. Place the chopped meat in a pot and cover with water.

  2. Add the pod of red pepper at the beginning of cooking for flavor.

  3. Let it stew for 7 to 8 hours, stirring occasionally to prevent lumping.

Season and finish

  1. Once the water has evaporated and the meat is thoroughly cooked, season with butter, pepper, and salt.

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 + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Round steak
Provides the meat that becomes tender and rich as it stews slowly.
Unsalted butter
Adds fat and a rich, smooth mouthfeel to the finished meat.
Red pepper pod
Infuses the stew with aroma and mild heat during cooking.

The step that matters

Stirring during the long stew. Stirring occasionally prevents the chopped meat from clumping and sticking as the water reduces over hours. Keeping it evenly moist and cooking gently helps the meat become uniformly tender rather than dry or scorched in spots.

“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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