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Evanston Chop Suey

A stir‑fry of round steak, onions, celery, pepper, and salt served over plain rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Evanston Chop Suey

Ingredients

Directions

Stew the beef

  1. Cut the round steak into finger-length pieces.

  2. Add the onions.

  3. Stew very slowly for 2 hours.

  4. Add the diced celery, pepper, and salt.

  5. Stew for an additional 20 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Thicken the gravy.

  2. Serve in a ring of plain rice.

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

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

  2. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Celery + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,169 recipes

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

  4. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Round steak
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, slow stewing.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they stew, adding body to the gravy.
Celery
Adds a fresh, crisp-cooked vegetable flavour and texture to the stew.

The step that matters

Stew very slowly for 2 hours. Round steak is a lean, tough cut, and low, gentle heat over a long time breaks down its connective tissue. Boiling hard instead leaves the meat tough and dry.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, pepper, rice):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, pepper, rice. 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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