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Beef Stew

A slow‑cooked beef stew with sugar, spices, herbs, and carrots simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Beef Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Cure and prepare

  1. Rub the beef and turn it once every 24 hours for 12 days.

  2. Wash the beef but do not soak it.

  3. Skewer or bind the beef into shape.

  4. Place the beef in a stewpan or saucepan nearly its size.

Cook

  1. Pour in 1½ pints of beef broth, bring to a boil, and skim off the scum.

  2. Add the onion, herbs, and carrots.

  3. Let it simmer gently for 4½ hours.

Cool

  1. If not serving hot, leave it in the broth until nearly cold.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Nutmeg + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main meat; long, gentle simmering breaks down connective tissue into a tender texture.
Beef broth
Supplies the cooking liquid, adding moisture and savory depth as the meat braises.
Carrots
Release natural sugars as they cook, adding gentle sweetness and body to the broth.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the salty, spiced cure on the meat.

The step that matters

Keep the simmer gentle. A vigorous boil toughens meat proteins and makes the broth cloudy, so the beef should cook at a slow, gentle simmer for the full time.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, sugar, pepper, clove, nutmeg, onion, thyme):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, sugar, pepper, clove, nutmeg, onion, thyme. 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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