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Sweet and Sour Beef

A dish of beef simmered in a sweet and sour sauce with raisins and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sweet and Sour Beef

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Brown the onions in the drippings in a large pot.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for a minute.

  3. Add the raisins, vinegar, ginger, cinnamon, pepper, cloves, salt, and water or soup stock.

  4. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until the beef is tender.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  5. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 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

Bottom round beef
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through long, slow simmering.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a sauce as it is stirred and heated.
Raisins
Add sweetness and plump up as they soften in the simmering liquid.
Vinegar
Adds the sour note that balances the sweetness of the raisins.
Onions
Browning them in drippings builds savory depth and sweetness for the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmering until the beef is tender. Beef from a tough cut needs gentle, sustained simmering so its connective tissue breaks down. Rushing with a hard boil can toughen the meat and leave it chewy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, flour, raisin, vinegar, ginger, cinnamon, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, raisin, vinegar, ginger, cinnamon, 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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