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A Good English Stew

A hearty beef stew simmered with lemon rind, rice flour, mushroom catsup, and optional wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

A Good English Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. In a large pot, combine the beef and broth and bring to a boil.

  2. Add salt and cayenne pepper, then reduce heat to simmer for 2 hours.

  3. Stir in the grated lemon rind and simmer for another 30 minutes.

Thicken and serve

  1. Mix the rice flour with mushroom catsup, lemon juice, and soy sauce until smooth, then add this mixture to the pot and cook for 15 minutes until thickened.

  2. Serve hot, optionally adding port or white wine for extra flavor.

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

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

  3. Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  4. Rice + mushroomtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,515 recipes

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

  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
Slow simmering breaks down connective tissue, making the rump tender and rich.
Rice flour
Starch swells in the hot liquid, thickening the stew into a gravy.
Mushroom catsup
Adds deep savoury, umami flavour to the broth.
Lemon rind
Lemon oils add bright aroma that lifts the rich meat.
Port or white wine
Adds acidity and fruity depth to the finished stew.

The step that matters

Thickening with rice flour. Rice flour must be mixed smoothly with the liquid ingredients before it goes into the pot, because dry starch added directly clumps. Once blended, it needs the full 15 minutes of cooking so the starch swells fully and the gravy thickens evenly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, rice, flour, mushroom, sauce, white wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, rice, flour, mushroom, sauce, white wine. 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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