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Swiss Stew

A beef stew made with steak, lard, flour, and water, simmered for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Swiss Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the steak

  1. Heat the lard in a skillet.

  2. Add the steak and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Brown the steak on both sides.

Simmer

  1. Pour boiling water over the steak and cover.

  2. Reduce heat and simmer slowly for about 2 hours.

  3. Mix flour with a little cold water or milk until smooth.

  4. Add the flour mixture to the cooking liquid.

Serve

  1. Pour some gravy over the steak and serve the rest in a bowl.

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 + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + milktop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Round steak
Is the main meat, which becomes tender through slow simmering.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth gravy when mixed with cold liquid first.

The step that matters

Mix flour with cold water or milk until smooth. Flour added dry or to hot liquid clumps instead of blending. Mixing it first with a little cold liquid lets the starch disperse evenly so the gravy thickens smoothly.

“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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