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To Stew Beef

A slow‑cooked beef stew with carrots, celery, onions, herbs, and optional wine and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 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 ↓

To Stew Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Place the beef in a pot and cover it with cold water, then cover the pot tightly.

  2. Boil for 3-4 hours, depending on the size of the beef.

Simmer with vegetables

  1. Add diced carrots, chopped celery, sweet herbs, peppercorns, mace, and onions stuck with cloves.

  2. Simmer for 2-3 hours, skimming off any fat that rises to the surface.

  3. Once the meat is tender, remove the onions, mince them, and fry in butter.

Finish the gravy

  1. Mix the fried onions into the gravy from the meat, seasoning with salt and cayenne or chili-vinegar.

  2. Add mushroom or walnut ketchup and thicken the gravy with flour.

  3. If needed, brown the gravy with a spoonful of slightly burnt sugar.

  4. For enhanced flavor, add port wine and curry powder, and optionally a clove of garlic.

  5. Garnish with vegetables before serving.

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 + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow moist cooking.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks, giving it body.
Sugar
Slightly burnt sugar adds colour and a deeper, caramel-like flavour to the gravy.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and aroma to the gravy once fried in butter.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the broth as they simmer with the meat.

The step that matters

Skimming fat during the simmer. Fat that rises to the surface can make the gravy greasy and heavy, so it should be skimmed off as the stew simmers.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, celery, mace, onion, butter, vinegar):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, celery, mace, onion, butter, vinegar. 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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