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Brown Stew Oe Beef

A beef stew with butter, onion, mushrooms, stock, herbs, and meat glaze, simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Brown Stew Oe Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat into nice square pieces.

  2. Heat the butter in a pan and fry the chopped onion until light golden.

Brown and simmer

  1. Add the meat and stir it in the butter, avoiding burning the onion.

  2. Cook for 1 minute.

  3. Add the stock, quartered mushrooms, and herbs.

  4. Simmer for 2 hours until tender.

  5. Season, add the meat glaze, and let it dissolve.

Serve

  1. Place the meat on a hot dish and strain the gravy over.

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. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

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

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Beef + meattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Steak or gravy beef
Provides the meat that becomes tender during the long simmer.
Butter
Carries the heat and adds richness while the meat and onion begin to brown.
Onion
Frying until light golden adds sweetness and savory depth to the gravy.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and moisture to the stew.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the gravy and carries flavor during simmering.
Meat glaze
Concentrates meaty savoriness and deepens the color of the gravy.

The step that matters

Browning the meat and onion in butter. Searing over sufficient heat creates browned flavor through the Maillard reaction, but burnt onion turns bitter, so the onion must be watched and stirred while the meat is added.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Onionthe original
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Tomatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, mushroom, meat. 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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