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Meat-stewing

A hearty stew of meat, onion, carrot, and turnip simmered in hot water with flour and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Meat-stewing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe the meat and cut it into neat pieces.

  2. Skin the onion, scald it, dry it, and cut it into thin rings.

  3. Prepare vegetables as for Haricot Mutton.

Brown and simmer

  1. Heat the dripping until smoking hot.

  2. Brown the meat quickly on both sides, then lift it onto a plate.

  3. Fry the onion for a few seconds.

  4. Add the flour and fry until well browned.

  5. Gradually add the hot water.

  6. Season with salt.

  7. Bring to a boil and remove any scum.

  8. Return the meat to the pan and add a pinch of pepper.

  9. Simmer gently for 1.5 to 2 hours, skimming and stirring occasionally.

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 + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 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. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Browns in the hot fat and thickens the stew liquid as it simmers.
Onion
Softens and adds sweetness and savory depth to the stew base.
Dripping (fat)
Conducts high heat for browning the meat and onion and carries flavor.

The step that matters

Brown the meat quickly on both sides. The meat must be seared in very hot fat so its surface browns rather than steams. This builds deep flavor through the Maillard reaction before the liquid is added.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, carrot, turnip, flour):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, carrot, turnip, flour. 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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