Skip to main content
Main

Brown Stew of Beef

A beef stew cooked with butter, onion, mushrooms, stock, herbs, and meat glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 of Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat into square pieces.

  2. Heat the butter in a pan.

Brown and simmer

  1. Fry the chopped onion until light golden.

  2. Add the meat.

  3. Stir in the butter for 1 minute, avoiding burning the onion.

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

  5. Simmer for 2 hours until the meat is tender.

  6. Season.

  7. Add the meat glaze and let it dissolve.

Serve

  1. Serve the meat on a hot dish.

  2. Strain the gravy over it.

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 long, slow simmering.
Butter
Carries browning flavour from the pan and enriches the gravy with fat.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma as it turns golden in the fat.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and moisture to the stew.
Stock
Forms the liquid that cooks the meat and becomes the gravy.
Meat glaze
Concentrates savoury meaty flavour and deepens the colour of the gravy.

The step that matters

Fry the onion until light golden. Onion sugars brown gradually, and burnt onion turns bitter, which carries into the whole gravy. Stirring the butter and onion over moderate heat keeps the colour even and the flavour sweet.

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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes