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To Stew Steaks

A simple beef stew with sliced steak, carrot, turnip, ketchup, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Stew Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and stew

  1. Cut the beef into thin slices.

  2. Place the beef in a stew pan with the hot water.

  3. Add the grated carrot, diced turnip, pepper, and salt.

  4. Stew for 1 hour or until tender, skimming if necessary.

Thicken and finish

  1. Thicken the stew with flour and ketchup.

  2. Optionally, add 2 oz of boiled macaroni or vermicelli during the last 10 to 20 minutes of cooking.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  3. Flour + turniptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + turniptop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Flour + carrottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Beefsteak
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through long, slow stewing.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a body-rich stew sauce.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and soft texture as it breaks down during stewing.
Turnip
Adds mild earthy flavour and soft texture after long cooking.
Ketchup
Adds acidity and sweetness that deepen the stew's savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Stew for 1 hour or until tender, skimming if necessary. Beef is tough collagen-rich meat that only turns tender with long, gentle simmering, not a rolling boil. Skimming removes foam and fat that can cloud the stew and taste greasy.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, pepper, turnip, ketchup):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper, turnip, ketchup. 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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