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Devonshire Stew

A hearty stew of veal or pork with onions, salt, pepper, and herbs simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Devonshire Stew

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine 3 quarts of water, 1 pound of veal (or ½ pound of fat pork), and 3 or 4 onions in a large pot.

  2. Add a pinch of coarse sea salt and bring to a boil.

  3. Reduce heat and simmer for 1.5 to 2 hours until the meat is tender.

  4. Serve hot, optionally adding more herbs for flavor.

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 + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Veal + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,841 recipes

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

  3. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal or fat pork
Provides the meat, which becomes tender and flavours the broth during slow simmering.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma to the broth as they cook down.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the meat is tender. A gentle simmer lets connective tissue in the meat break down slowly. A hard boil can toughen the proteins and leave the meat dry and stringy, so keep the liquid at a steady, low bubble.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, 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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