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Beef Ragout

A hearty beef stew with carrots, onion, celery, and a thickened sauce of flour, gravy, and ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Beef Ragout

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut the meat from the bone and coat it with flour.

  2. Fry the beef until browned, then pour over boiling water and small beer.

Stew and thicken

  1. Add carrots, onion with cloves, whole pepper, salt, lemon peel, and sweet herbs.

  2. Let it stew for 1 hour.

  3. Add good gravy and remove the meat when tender.

  4. Strain the sauce and thicken it with flour.

  5. Add boiled celery and ketchup, then return the meat to the sauce.

  6. Simmer gently before serving.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

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

Beef rump
Provides the meat that becomes tender during the long, slow stew.
Flour
Coats the meat to aid browning and later thickens the sauce.
Good gravy
Adds savoury body and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and tang that rounds out the sauce's flavour.

The step that matters

Thickening the strained sauce with flour. Flour must be fully incorporated, ideally by whisking it into a little liquid first, otherwise it forms lumps and the sauce stays floury. Simmering gently afterward lets the starch swell fully and cook out its raw taste.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, flour, beer, carrot, onion, clove, pepper):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, beer, carrot, onion, clove, 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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