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Stewing. Beef

A hearty beef stew with turnips, carrots, leek, celery, burnt bread, and red wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stewing. Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. In a stewpan, combine beef, water, salt, pepper, marjoram, and cloves.

  2. Cover tightly and stew over low heat for 4 hours.

  3. Add turnips, carrots, leek, celery, burnt bread, and red wine.

Serve

  1. Serve hot in a soup dish, garnished with sliced boiled carrot.

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Marjoram + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Marjoram + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main protein and body, which becomes tender during long, gentle stewing.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavor to the broth.
Burnt bread
Adds a dark, toasty aroma and color to the broth.
Carrots
Add sweetness and texture to the stew.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and body to the stew.

The step that matters

Stewing over low heat. Gentle, covered simmering over low heat for the full 4 hours lets tough beef collagen break down slowly, so the meat turns tender without drying out or toughening.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, marjoram, turnip, carrot, leek, celery. 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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