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Creole Stew

A stew of beef or fowl with rice, tomatoes, onions, peppers, carrots or okra, simmered and cooked slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Creole Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat into small pieces or cut the fowl into joints.

Cook

  1. Melt the fat in a cooking vessel, then add the onions, peppers, and meat or chicken. Brown for a few minutes.

  2. Add the seasoning, rice, vegetables, and 1 cup of boiling water.

  3. Simmer for 30 minutes, then place in a fireless cooker for 3 hours without disks or 2 hours with them.

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 + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Rice + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

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

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 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

Lean beef or fowl
Provides the protein and rich savory flavor that forms the body of the stew.
Rice
Absorbs cooking liquid and thickens the stew as it softens.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and liquid that carry the flavors through the stew.
Fat
Carries flavor from the onions and peppers and helps brown the meat.
Carrots or okra
Add body, sweetness and texture to the stew as they cook slowly.

The step that matters

Browning the meat. Browning creates flavorful compounds through the Maillard reaction. Meat that is crowded or steamed instead of seared develops less flavor and a greyer, blander stew.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Okrafits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, rice, tomato, carrot, pepper. 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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