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Brown Stew

A beef stew with carrots, onions, herbs, and optional mushrooms and tomatoes, simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Brown Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Melt the butter in a pot.

  2. Fry the beef until browned, then remove the beef from the pot.

  3. Fry the carrot and onion until softened.

  4. Add the flour and fry until browned.

  5. Stir in the stock, herbs, and clove, and bring to a boil.

  6. Return the beef to the pot.

  7. Add the mushrooms.

  8. Add the peeled, sliced tomatoes.

  9. Simmer gently for about two hours, or longer if the meat is tough.

  10. Remove the herbs and clove.

Serve

  1. 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. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Tomato + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fat that carries the browning of the beef and vegetables and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Browned with the fat, it thickens the stock into a body-rich gravy.
Stewing beef
Tough cut that becomes tender through long, gentle simmering as its connective tissue breaks down.
Stock
Liquid that cooks the meat and vegetables and forms the base of the gravy.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it cooks, adding savoury depth to the gravy.
Mushrooms
Release moisture and savoury flavour into the stew as they simmer.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for about two hours. Stewing beef is tough, and its connective tissue only breaks down into tender meat with long, low, slow heat. A hard boil toughens the meat and can make the stew cloudy, so keep the liquid at a gentle simmer.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, beef, mushroom, carrot, onion, clove):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, beef, mushroom, carrot, onion, clove. 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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