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Dutch Stew — a Winter Dish

A hearty Dutch stew made with lean brisket, vegetables, and spices, simmered slowly and served hot.

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 ↓

Dutch Stew — a Winter Dish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and simmer

  1. Remove all bones from the brisket and tie it into its original shape.

  2. Place the brisket in boiling water with minced onion, salt, black and white pepper, and mustard. Simmer gently for 2 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Add chopped vegetables and cover with whole potatoes, sprinkling with salt and cayenne. Close the pan tightly and cook for another 1.5 hours.

  2. Serve hot, garnished with fingers of dry toast.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Leek + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean brisket
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, gentle simmering.
Spanish onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savory depth to the cooking liquid.
Potatoes
Absorb cooking liquid and soften into a starchy, hearty component of the stew.
Mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent note that balances the richness of the meat.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 2 hours. Gentle heat breaks down the connective tissue in brisket slowly. A hard boil toughens muscle fibres and makes the meat stringy rather than tender.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, pepper, mustard, clove, celery, leek, carrot):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, mustard, clove, celery, leek, carrot. 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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