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French Stew

A veal stew made with butter, flour, onion, and water, simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

French Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a kettle, melt the butter and stir in the flour until browned.

  2. Add the minced onion and veal pieces, stirring to combine.

Cook

  1. Cover with water, season with salt and pepper, and bring to a simmer.

  2. Cook slowly for 2 hours until the veal 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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Onion + vealtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,841 recipes

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

  5. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Flour
Browns with the butter to form a roux that thickens the stew's liquid.
Veal
Becomes tender during slow simmering, forming the main body of the stew.
Butter
Carries the flour's browning and adds rich flavour to the base.
Onion
Softens and adds savoury sweetness to the stew's base.

The step that matters

Cook slowly for 2 hours until the veal is tender. A gentle simmer lets collagen in the veal break down slowly into gelatin, making it tender and juicy. Boiling hard toughens the meat fibres and can leave the stew cloudy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, veal, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, veal, 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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