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Beef, Ragout of

A stew of sliced roast beef simmered with onions, carrot, turnip, stock, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Beef, Ragout of

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat into neat slices and set aside.

  2. Boil the bones and trimmings for at least 2 hours to make stock.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan, add the onions, carrot, and turnip, and fry until lightly browned.

  2. Sprinkle in the flour, stir, and cook slowly until well browned.

  3. Add the stock, season to taste, and stir until boiling.

  4. Boil gently for 15 minutes, then cool slightly and add the meat.

  5. Cover closely and cook very gently for 1½ hours, keeping the temperature just below simmering point.

Serve

  1. Place the slices of meat on a hot dish, strain the sauce over, and garnish with the separately cooked vegetable dice.

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. Onion + turniptop 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. Onion + carrottop 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

Cold roast beef
Provides the meat, which is sliced and gently heated in the sauce until tender.
Butter or fat
Carries the browning of the vegetables and flour and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce and, when cooked until well browned, adds colour and a toasted flavour.
Onions
Soften and brown in the fat, adding sweetness and savoury depth to the sauce.
Stock
Forms the liquid of the sauce, carrying flavour and body to the meat.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour until well browned. Browning the flour in fat develops nutty, toasted flavour and colour, and it must be stirred to avoid lumps or scorching. Under-browning leaves the sauce pale and floury tasting.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Okrafits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, flour, carrot, turnip, 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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