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Hump- or Beef-steak, Stewed

A stew of beef steak with onions, turnips, carrots, butter, water, ketchup, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot 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 ↓

Hump- or Beef-steak, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the meat and vegetables

  1. Cut the steaks into convenient-sized pieces and fry them in butter until browned on both sides.

  2. Clean and peel the vegetables.

  3. Slice the onions and carrots, and dice the turnips.

  4. Fry the sliced onions, carrots, and diced turnips in the same fat used for the steaks.

Stew

  1. Combine the fried steaks and vegetables in a saucepan.

  2. Add ½ pint of water, simmer gently for 2 to 3 hours, and skim the surface.

Season and thicken

  1. Add salt, pepper, and ketchup.

  2. Mix the flour with 2 tablespoons of cold water and add to the pot.

  3. Bring to a boil for 1 to 2 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve.

  2. If desired, stew the day before and remove fat when cold.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  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 or rump steak
Browning builds savoury flavour, and long gentle simmering softens the meat until tender.
Onions
Cooking softens them and adds sweetness and savoury depth to the stew.
Carrots
They soften during simmering and add natural sweetness to the gravy.
Turnips
They soften during simmering and add body and a mild sweetness.
Butter
Fat for frying promotes browning and carries rich flavour into the meat and vegetables.
Flour
Starch thickens the cooking liquid into a light gravy when it is brought to a boil.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour with cold water before adding it to the pot. Flour stirred directly into hot liquid forms lumps. Blending it first with cold water creates a smooth slurry that disperses evenly. Boiling then gelatinises the starch, which thickens the gravy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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