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Stewed Beef and French Beans

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,242 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stewed Beef and French Beans

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Put the meat and sliced onions into a clean saucepan with the water and seasoning.

  2. Place over low heat and simmer gently.

  3. String and cut the beans into thin slanting slices, wash, and add to the stew.

  4. Simmer all gently for 3 to 4 hours.

  5. In a bowl, mix the sugar and flour with the vinegar, then add to the stew.

  6. Let it boil for 15 minutes, then 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. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

  2. Onion + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 recipes

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

  3. Beans + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together609 recipes

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

  4. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, ginger, sugar, vinegar):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, ginger, sugar, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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