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A Stew of Vegetables and Cold Meat

A stew of beet, onion, lettuce, cucumber, boiled peas, and cold meat cooked with butter, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,409 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

A Stew of Vegetables and Cold Meat

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the beet, onion, lettuce, and cucumber in a stewpan with a little water and butter.

  2. Season with pepper and salt.

  3. Set the pan in the oven and stew the vegetables until tender.

  4. Add the boiled peas and cold meat to the pan.

  5. Continue to stew until the meat is heated through and ready to serve.

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. Lettuce + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

  2. Lettuce + peastop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Cucumber + peastop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

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

  4. Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  5. Onion + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 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

Beet
Adds color and earthy body as it softens into the stew.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the vegetables soften gently in the pan.
Cold meat
Provides the substantial protein of the dish, heated through at the end.
Boiled peas
Add sweetness and texture, already cooked, so they only need warming.

The step that matters

Stewing the vegetables until tender. Cooking the vegetables fully in a small amount of liquid and fat breaks down their cell walls, so they become soft. Adding the meat too early would overcook it and make it tough, which is why it goes in later.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, cucumber, butter, pepper, peas, meat):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, cucumber, butter, pepper, peas, 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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