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Beef En Miroton

A beef stew with onions, butter, flour, broth, white wine, boiled beef, seasoned with mustard or vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef En Miroton

Ingredients

Directions

Make the onion sauce

  1. Slice the onions and fry them in butter with a little flour until browned.

  2. Add broth and white wine, then stew until the onions are well cooked.

Finish the stew

  1. Cut boiled beef into thin slices and add to the pot.

  2. Stew until the beef is flavored with the onion.

  3. Season with mustard or a dash of vinegar and 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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + white winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,535 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook down, forming the body of the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the onions brown.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce.
Broth
Provides the liquid base that carries flavor and keeps the beef moist.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the sauce as it simmers.
Boiled beef
Provides the main protein, which absorbs the flavor of the onion sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the onions. Onions must brown in butter before liquid goes in. Browning develops deeper, sweeter flavor through the Maillard reaction, and adding liquid too early would steam them instead.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, flour, white wine, 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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