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Steak Stewed with Mushrooms and Vinegar

A stew of steak pieces cooked with mushrooms, vinegar, and aromatics.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 602 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Steak Stewed with Mushrooms and Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the steak

  1. Beat the steak well and rub in a mixture of salt, pepper, and flour.

  2. Cut the steak into 1-inch pieces, leaving some fat on.

Cook the stew

  1. Place the steak in a stewpan with water, vinegar, sugar, shallots, bay leaf, cloves, and apple.

  2. Cover tightly and cook slowly for 1 hour.

  3. Add mushrooms and breadcrumbs, cover again, and simmer for 20 minutes.

  4. Serve hot.

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. Tarragon + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 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

Steak
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, slow, moist cooking.
Flour
Coats the steak and helps thicken the cooking liquid into a light gravy.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb liquid and help thicken the stew's sauce as they simmer.
Brown or tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps soften the meat.
Button mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and moisture to the stew.

The step that matters

Cover tightly and cook slowly for 1 hour. A tight lid and low, gentle heat keep moisture in and let tough collagen in the steak break down slowly. Boiling hard toughens the meat and can dry out the liquid.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, flour, tarragon, sugar, shallot, clove, mushroom):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, tarragon, sugar, shallot, clove, mushroom. 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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