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Stewed Beef and Rice

A stew of beef and rice cooked with onion, herbs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stewed Beef and Rice

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat into squares.

  2. Peel and slice the onion into rings.

  3. Wash the rice.

Make the stew

  1. Melt the dripping in a stewpan.

  2. Add the salt, pepper, herbs, and onion to the stewpan.

  3. Fry for 10 minutes, stirring often to prevent burning.

  4. Add the meat and water to the stewpan.

  5. Let it all simmer for 1 hour.

  6. Add the rice and simmer for another 30 minutes, stirring often to prevent burning.

Serve

  1. Serve hot on a dish.

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

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

  2. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Beef + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Beef steak or leg of beef
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during the long simmer.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it fries, adding flavour to the stew base.
Rice
Absorbs liquid and thickens the stew as it cooks.
Dripping
Fat for frying the onion and seasonings, carrying flavour through the dish.

The step that matters

Frying the onion with seasonings. Stirring often keeps the onion from scorching on the bottom of the pan, which would leave a bitter, burnt taste in the stew.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, rice, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, rice, pepper. 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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