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To Stew Steaks and Chops

A beef stew made with sliced steak, carrots, turnip, pepper, salt, thickened with arrowroot or flour, and flavored with ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and arrowroot share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 64 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Stew Steaks and Chops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stew

  1. Place the sliced beef in a stew pan and add enough water to make gravy.

  2. Add the grated carrot, turnip squares, pepper, and salt.

  3. Stew for 1 hour or until the beef is tender, skimming as necessary.

Finish and serve

  1. Thicken the gravy with a little arrowroot or flour and flavor with ketchup.

  2. If using, add macaroni or vermicelli and boil for 10 to 20 minutes with the stew.

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. Turnip + arrowroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Carrot + arrowroottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together164 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 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
Becomes tender during slow stewing and gives the stew its main body and savory flavor.
Arrowroot or flour
Thickens the gravy as its starch swells when heated, giving it body.
Turnip
Adds bulk and a mild, slightly sweet earthy flavor as it softens in the stew.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and color while softening in the gravy.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with arrowroot or flour. Starch must be mixed smoothly and cooked in the hot liquid to swell and thicken it. Added as dry lumps, it clumps and leaves the gravy grainy and uneven.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, pepper, ketchup):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, pepper, ketchup. 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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