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Stewed Steak and Potato Border

A stew of stewing steak and diced vegetables served with a border of mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stewed Steak and Potato Border

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the carrot and turnip into small dice.

  2. Cut the stewing steak into neat pieces and dip them in flour.

Brown and stew

  1. Heat the dripping in a stew pan until smoking hot.

  2. Fry the meat in the hot dripping, then remove it to a plate.

  3. Fry the diced vegetables briefly in the same pan.

  4. Add the water and stir until boiling.

  5. Return the meat to the pan and let it simmer gently for 1.5 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve the meat and gravy in the center of a dish surrounded by a border of mashed potatoes.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Carrot + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Stewing steak
Provides the meat that becomes tender during slow simmering while its surface browns when fried.
Flour
Coats the meat so it browns well and thickens the cooking liquid into gravy.
Dripping
Conducts heat for frying the meat and vegetables and adds rich flavour.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it softens and browns in the fat.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body to the gravy as it cooks.
Turnip
Adds mild sweetness and soft texture to the stew as it cooks.

The step that matters

Fry the meat in smoking hot dripping. The meat must be seared in very hot fat so its floured surface browns quickly. Browning builds flavour and seals the surface, while a cool pan would steam the meat and make the gravy pale and dull.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, flour):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, 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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