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Stewed Rump of Beef

A slow‑cooked beef rump simmered with bacon, herbs, vinegar, cider, and optional aromatics, finished with a port‑wine glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Stewed Rump of Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Roast the beef until half cooked.

  2. Put the beef in a pot with water, bacon, sweet herbs, vinegar, and cider or wine.

  3. Insert cloves into the onions.

  4. Add the onions with sage leaves to the pot.

  5. Cover the pot.

  6. Simmer for 3 hours, adding water if needed.

Make the gravy

  1. Strain the gravy.

  2. Set the strained gravy aside.

  3. Add port wine to the strained gravy.

  4. Reduce the mixture to a glaze.

  5. Thicken the remaining gravy if needed.

Finish and serve

  1. Boil or bake onions.

  2. Arrange the onions around the beef.

  3. Cover the beef with forcemeat balls, fried paste ornaments, and mushrooms if available.

  4. Pour the glaze over the beef.

  5. Serve the beef garnished with pickles.

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

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

  2. Clove + sagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together731 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Cider + port winetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together41 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).

  4. Vinegar + cidertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 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
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow simmering.
Bacon
Adds salty, smoky fat that flavours the cooking liquid and gravy.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the liquid and helps tenderise the meat.
Cider or small wine
Adds acidity and fruity flavour to the braising liquid.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth as it reduces into the glaze.
Onions
Soften during cooking and add sweetness and savoury depth to the dish.

The step that matters

Simmer for 3 hours, adding water if needed. A gentle simmer slowly breaks down connective tissue in the beef. Boiling hard toughens the meat and can reduce the liquid too fast, so the pot must be kept covered and at a low, steady heat.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, vinegar, cider, clove, onion, mushroom, port wine):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, vinegar, cider, clove, onion, mushroom, port 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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