Skip to main content
Main

Brunswick Stew

A stew of chicken or squirrel with tomatoes, butter beans, potatoes, corn, butter, salt pork, cayenne pepper, salt, sugar, onion, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Tomato and beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Brunswick Stew

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the chickens or squirrels, tomatoes, butter beans, potatoes, green corn, butter, fat salt pork, cayenne pepper, salt, sugar, onion, and water in a large pot.

  2. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer slowly for 2.5 hours.

  3. Ten minutes before serving, add butter rolled in flour in small lumps.

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. Tomato + beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Beans + corntop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Potato + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Beans + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together655 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens or squirrels
Provide the meat that flavours the stew and becomes tender during the long simmer.
Butter beans
Add body and a creamy texture as they cook down in the broth.
Potatoes
Break down slightly during simmering, helping to thicken the stew.
Green corn
Adds sweetness and fresh texture to the stew.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, rounding out the broth's flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour lumps. Flour rolled into butter and dropped into hot liquid can clump if added as a paste. Small lumps disperse and thicken the broth gradually as the starch gelatinises with heat, so the stew finishes smooth rather than lumpy.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipes