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Portugal Beef

A beef stew with chestnuts, anchovy, and gherkins, thickened with butter and flour, served with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Portugal Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Remove the bone from the rump of beef and cut it across.

  2. Flour the beef and fry the thin part in butter.

  3. Stuff the thick end with suet, boiled chestnuts, anchovy, onion, and pepper.

Stew and finish

  1. Stew in a pan of good stock until tender.

  2. Place the stewed part in a dish and cut the fried part in two, laying it on each side.

  3. Strain the gravy, add chopped gherkins and boiled chestnuts, thicken with butter rolled in flour.

  4. Add browning, boil, season with salt, and pour over the beef.

  5. Garnish with lemon.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Flour + chestnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together517 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Chestnut + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together696 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef rump
Forms the main body of the stew; slow stewing makes the meat tender.
Flour
Coats the beef for browning and thickens the gravy when rolled with butter.
Butter
Browns the thin beef pieces and, kneaded with flour, thickens the gravy richly.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and rich during stewing.
Boiled chestnuts
Give the stuffing and gravy a soft, starchy body and a mild sweetness.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and sweetness to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Stew in a pan of good stock until tender. Beef rump is tough and needs long, gentle simmering so collagen breaks down into gelatin. Boiling hard toughens the meat and makes the gravy cloudy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, flour, butter, chestnut, anchovy, onion, pepper):

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, butter, chestnut, anchovy, onion, 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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