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Stewed Rump of Beef

A slow‑cooked stew of rump of beef with carrots, turnip, onion, mushrooms, and a thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Stewed Rump of Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Stew the beef

  1. Place the beef in a stewpan with cold water.

  2. Add the carrots, turnip, onion, mushrooms, salt, and peppercorns.

  3. Stew gently for 4 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the meat and place it in a deep dish with the vegetables around it.

  2. Skim the fat from the gravy.

  3. Thicken the gravy with flour mixed with ketchup, then boil briefly.

  4. Pour the gravy over the meat.

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. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 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

Top rump of beef
Long, gentle stewing softens the tough connective tissue into tender meat.
Flour
Starch thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth gravy as it boils.
Carrots
Release sweetness and body into the stewing liquid as they cook.
Walnut, tomato, or mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury depth and a tangy, umami note to the gravy.

The step that matters

Stew gently for 4 hours. Keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil lets collagen in the tough rump break down slowly, so the meat turns tender without tightening and drying out.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, onion, mushroom, flour. 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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