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Breakfast Stew

A stew of cold roast beef simmered with water, chili sauce, salt, pepper, and flour, served with dry toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Breakfast Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cold roast beef into small pieces.

  2. Heat the beef slowly with cold water, chili sauce, salt, and pepper.

Thicken and serve

  1. Rub flour with some butter and a little of the hot gravy.

  2. Add the flour mixture to the beef and cook until the flour is done.

  3. Serve with bits of dry toast.

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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Sauce + flourtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Roast beef
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender as it heats in the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as its starch swells when cooked in liquid.
Butter
Coats the flour so it blends smoothly into the hot gravy without lumping.
Chili sauce
Adds tangy, spicy flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture to the beef. Flour lumps if added dry or without being blended with fat and hot liquid first. Cooking it fully in the gravy removes the raw starch taste and lets the sauce thicken evenly.

“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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