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Portugal Beef

A beef stew with anchovy, onion, pepper, broth, and chestnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and chestnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 517 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Portugal Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Cut the meat off the bone of the rump and slice it across.

  2. Flour the meat.

Cook the meat

  1. Fry the thin part in butter until browned.

  2. Stuff the thick end with the anchovy, onion, and a little pepper.

  3. Stew the meat in strong broth until tender.

Serve

  1. Cut the fried pieces in half.

  2. Arrange the fried and stewed meat together on a dish.

  3. Strain the stewing gravy.

  4. Pour the strained gravy over the meat.

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. Flour + chestnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together517 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

  4. Onion + chestnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together696 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  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 rump
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow stewing in broth.
Flour
Coats the meat so it browns in the butter and helps thicken the gravy.
Butter
Fat that fries the thin pieces, browning their surface and adding richness.
Anchovy
Adds a deep savoury flavour to the stuffing that seasons the meat from within.
Strong broth
Liquid that stews the meat until tender and forms the gravy.

The step that matters

Stew the meat in strong broth until tender. Tough rump needs long, gentle simmering so collagen breaks down into gelatin; boiling hard toughens the fibres and makes the meat stringy.

Swap the chestnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, flour, butter, onion, anchovy, pepper):

  1. Beansfits about as well
  2. Sesamefits about as well
  3. Chestnutthe original
  4. Walnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, butter, onion, anchovy, 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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