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Shin of Beef Stewed

A slow‑cooked stew of beef shin with herbs, vegetables, and a thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot 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 ↓

Shin of Beef Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Place the beef in a stew pan and cover the beef with cold water.

  2. Bring the water to a simmer and skim off any impurities.

  3. Add sweet herbs, onion, celery, black pepper, and allspice.

  4. Stew gently over low heat for 3.5 to 4.5 hours until tender.

Cook the vegetables

  1. Boil the carrots, turnips, and onions until tender.

  2. Drain the vegetables.

Finish the gravy

  1. Remove the beef carefully and place the beef on a dish.

  2. Mix flour with beef liquor to thicken the gravy.

  3. Stir the gravy until it boils.

  4. Skim off the fat.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef shin
Becomes tender through long slow stewing, and its bone and connective tissue enrich the stock.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a gravy as its starch swells when heated.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the stew as they soften during cooking.
Turnips
Add a mild, slightly sweet flavour and soft texture to the stew.
Silver button onions
Add mild sweetness and a tender texture to the finished stew.

The step that matters

Stir the gravy until it boils. Flour must be fully heated past boiling so its starch swells and thickens the gravy. Stopping early leaves the gravy thin and floury-tasting.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, celery, pepper, allspice, carrot, turnip, flour):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, celery, pepper, allspice, carrot, turnip, 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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