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Hodge-podge

A hearty stew of beef, beer, and vegetables simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Hodge-podge

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. In a large stewpan, combine the beef, beer, and water. Simmer for a few minutes and skim off any foam.

  2. Add the chopped vegetables and season with pepper and salt. Stew gently until the meat is tender, about 3 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Thicken the stew with a mixture of butter and flour before serving.

  2. Serve with additional turnips and carrots, or spinach and celery.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Shin of beef
Becomes tender and rich during long, gentle stewing, as its connective tissue softens.
Table beer
Adds malty, slightly bitter flavour to the liquid as it simmers with the meat.
Butter and flour
Thicken the cooking liquid into a smooth, body-rich sauce when stirred in.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, building flavour in the stew base.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and colour while softening during the long stew.

The step that matters

Stew gently until the meat is tender. A gentle simmer lets collagen in the shin break down into gelatin slowly. A hard boil toughens the muscle fibres and can leave the meat dry and stringy.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, beer, onion, carrot, celery, pepper, butter):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, beer, onion, carrot, celery, pepper, butter. 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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