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Breakfast Stew

A hearty stew of beef or mutton with onion and carrot simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and carrot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21,601 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Breakfast Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Buy your meat a day in advance and cut it into small pieces, about 1 inch long.

Make the stew

  1. In a pot, heat a little dripping or oil.

  2. Add the sliced onion and carrot, and sauté until softened.

  3. Add the meat to the pot and brown it on all sides.

  4. Pour in enough boiling water to cover the meat, about 1 pint for every pound of meat.

  5. Cover and let it simmer slowly for 2-3 hours until tender.

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

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

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Beef + carrottop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,606 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 mutton
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through long, slow simmering.
Onion
Softens and adds sweetness and savory depth to the stew base.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and body to the stew as it softens.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly until tender. Tough meat cuts need long, gentle simmering so their collagen breaks down into gelatin. Boiling hard can toughen the muscle fibers and leave the meat dry, so keep the liquid at a slow simmer.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion. 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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