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Stewed Fresh Beef and Rice

A simple stew of fresh beef, onion, salt, and sugar simmered in water, served with rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stewed Fresh Beef and Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat the fat in a pot.

  2. Cut the beef into large dice and add to the pot.

  3. Sprinkle with salt and sugar.

  4. Chop the onion and add it to the pot.

  5. Add enough water to cover the ingredients.

Cook and serve

  1. Simmer until the beef is tender.

  2. Serve with rice.

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

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

  2. Sugar + oniontop 36% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,747 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Beef + sugartop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and onion barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,747 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh beef
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender with slow simmering in liquid.
Fat
Carries heat into the pot and adds richness to the stew.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and body as it softens in the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer until the beef is tender. Beef made of tough connective tissue needs long, gentle simmering in liquid to break that tissue down. Boiling hard can toughen the meat, so keep the liquid at a slow simmer and check for tenderness before serving.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, sugar. 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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