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Brown Stew of Beef

A beef stew with butter, onion, mushrooms, stock, herbs, and meat glaze, simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Brown Stew of Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat into square pieces.

  2. Heat the butter in a pan and fry the chopped onion until golden.

  3. Add the meat and stir it in the butter for 1 minute without burning the onion.

Simmer

  1. Add the stock, quartered mushrooms, and herbs.

  2. Simmer for 2 hours until the meat is tender.

  3. Season, then add the meat glaze and let it dissolve.

Serve

  1. Serve the meat on a hot dish.

  2. Strain the gravy over it.

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 + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

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

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  5. Beef + meattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Steak or gravy beef
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow simmering.
Butter
Fat for frying the onion and meat, adding richness and browning flavour.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savour as it turns golden in the butter.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and moisture to the stew.
Stock
Liquid that cooks the meat and forms the body of the gravy.
Meat glaze
Concentrated meat flavour that deepens and enriches the gravy.

The step that matters

Browning the meat in butter. Stirring the meat in hot butter for only about a minute, without burning the onion, builds browned flavour through the Maillard reaction. Burnt onion turns bitter and taints the whole gravy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, mushroom, meat):

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Onionthe original
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Tomatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, mushroom, meat. 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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