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Brunswick Stew

A stew of squirrels, pork, onion, corn, tomatoes, and butter‑flour mixture, simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,099 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Brunswick Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. In a large pot, combine the squirrels, pork, onion, and parsley with enough water to cover.

  2. Bring to a boil and cook for 10 minutes.

  3. Add the corn and simmer until the squirrels are tender.

  4. Stir in the sliced tomatoes and cook for an additional 20 minutes.

  5. Mix in the butter and flour, then simmer for 10 more minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve in a large, deep dish.

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. Corn + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Pork + corntop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,069 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Squirrels
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through long simmering in liquid.
Fat salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that enriches the broth.
Corn
Adds sweetness and body as it cooks into the stew.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and moisture, giving the stew its tangy base.
Butter and flour
Flour thickens the broth while butter adds richness and a smooth texture.

The step that matters

Simmering the squirrels until tender. Gray squirrel meat is lean and tough, so it needs a long, gentle simmer to become tender. Adding the tomatoes and corn too early or boiling too hard can leave the meat firm and the broth unevenly cooked.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, onion, corn, tomato, butter, flour):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, onion, corn, tomato, butter, 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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