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Leg of Beef Stew

A hearty stew made with leg of beef, carrots, turnip, onions, and a vinegar‑soaked broth thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Leg of Beef Stew

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the leg of beef into neat pieces.

  2. Soak the beef in vinegar for a few minutes to soften the fibers.

  3. Fry the onions until brown.

  4. Drain the onions from the fat.

  5. Cut the carrots, turnip, and any remaining vegetables into small squares.

Simmer the stew

  1. Add the onions to a stewpan with the beef.

  2. Add the boiling water to the stewpan.

  3. Cover the stewpan closely.

  4. Simmer the stew gently for about 4 hours.

  5. Add the vegetables to the stew one hour before it finishes cooking.

  6. Mix the flour with a little cold water to make a smooth paste.

  7. Add the flour paste to the stew.

  8. Stir the stew until it boils.

  9. Season the stew to taste with salt and pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve the stew on a hot dish, stirring a few times while 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. Turnip + oniontop 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. Carrot + oniontop 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

Leg of beef
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, gentle simmering.
Vinegar
Its acidity softens the meat fibers before cooking.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, lightly body-filled stew.
Onions
Browning in fat adds savoury depth and sweetness to the stew.
Carrots
Add sweetness and hold their shape through the long simmer.
Turnip
Adds earthy flavour and firm texture to the stew.

The step that matters

Simmering the stew gently. A gentle simmer keeps the meat tender and the liquid clear. Boiling hard toughens muscle fibers and breaks up the vegetables, so keep the heat low and the pot covered.

Swap the onion

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

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

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