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Steak Stewed with Celery

A stew of steak, celery, carrots, onion, artichokes, tomatoes, lemon, horse-radish, capsicum, pepper, salt, mustard, and clove.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Steak Stewed with Celery

Oven, in the book's wordsA good hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Fry the celery, carrots, onion, and artichokes until softened.

  3. Add the juices of the tomatoes and lemon, horse-radish, capsicum, pepper, salt, mustard, and clove.

Simmer and serve

  1. Bring to a boil, then add the whole steak and sliced kidney on top.

  2. Cover with mushrooms, close the pan, and simmer gently for 1 hour and 15 minutes without opening.

  3. Serve hot, garnished with 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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  4. Artichoke + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together524 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Steak
Becomes tender and flavorful as it simmers slowly in the covered stew.
Veal kidney
Adds rich, meaty flavor and a tender texture after gentle simmering.
Artichokes
Soften during frying and add body and a mild, earthy flavor to the stew.
Tomatoes
Their juice adds acidity and brightness that balance the rich meats.

The step that matters

Simmer gently with the pan closed. A gentle simmer keeps the steak and kidney tender; a hard boil toughens meat proteins and can dry the liquid, so the lid stays on to hold moisture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, celery, carrot, artichoke, veal, parsley, tomato):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, celery, carrot, artichoke, veal, parsley, tomato. 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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