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A stew of beef, cabbage, and potatoes served with gooseberry or other fruit pudding.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,052 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Dinner

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cook the beef until tender.

  2. Boil the cabbage until soft.

  3. Peel and boil the potatoes until fork-tender.

  4. Prepare the gooseberry or other fruit pudding according to your preferred recipe.

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 + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Cabbage + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together275 recipes

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

  3. Potato + gooseberrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl isobutyrate (flower).

  4. Beef + cabbagetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together872 recipes

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

  5. Cabbage + gooseberrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: hex-2-enal (green, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Long, slow cooking breaks down connective tissue, making the meat tender and juicy.
Potatoes
Starch softens when boiled, giving the stew a soft, hearty texture.
Gooseberry or other fruit pudding
Tart fruit adds acidity that balances the rich, savoury stew.

The step that matters

Cook the beef until tender. Beef from a tough cut is rich in connective tissue, which breaks down into gelatin only with long, gentle cooking. Stopping early leaves the meat chewy, so it needs to be cooked until it is truly tender.

Swap the gooseberry

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, cabbage, potato):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Gooseberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, cabbage, potato. 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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