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Beef and Macaroni

A stew of beef fillet, onions, and macaroni simmered with water or stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef and Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the onions and fry them thoroughly in butter.

  2. Lard the fillet of beef and place it in a stewpan with the onions and water or stock.

  3. If using water, add a few vegetables.

Stew

  1. Simmer gently for 2 hours.

  2. Add the macaroni and stew gently for another 35 minutes.

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 + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  2. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + beeftop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Frying them in butter first builds a sweet, savoury base for the stew.
Fillet of rump beef
Long gentle simmering turns the tough cut tender while it releases flavour into the liquid.
Macaroni
Absorbs the cooking liquid and thickens the stew as it softens.
Butter
Fat that carries the onions' flavour and helps them brown lightly as they fry.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 2 hours. A gentle simmer keeps the beef tender and juicy, while a hard boil toughens the muscle fibres and can make the stock cloudy. Keep the liquid just barely bubbling.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, beef. 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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