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Exeter Stew

A beef stew with onions, vinegar, and gravy, served with savory balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Exeter Stew

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Remove all fat from the beef and cut it into 8 to 10 pieces.

  2. Place the beef in a stew jar with vinegar and put it in a cool oven.

Make the gravy

  1. Heat the dripping in a frying pan, then fry the sliced onions and flour until brown.

  2. Add water to the onion mixture, bring to a boil, and pour it over the beef.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, cover tightly, and cook gently for about 3 hours.

Make and cook the savoury balls

  1. For the savoury balls, mix flour, suet, parsley, mixed herbs, salt, baking powder, and pepper.

  2. Add water to bind the mixture into a stiff dough and form into 12 balls.

  3. About 40 minutes before serving, bring the stew to a boil, drop in the balls, and simmer for 40 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the meat in the center of a hot dish, strain the gravy over, and arrange the balls around the base.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

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

  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
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, gentle cooking in liquid.
Flour
Browns with the onions and thickens the gravy, and also binds the savoury balls.
Dripping
Fat that carries the frying and helps the onions and flour brown richly.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that helps soften the beef and brightens the stew's flavour.
Suet
Hard fat that keeps the savoury balls moist and tender as they cook.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the savoury balls rise and stay light.

The step that matters

Binding the savoury balls into a stiff dough. Too much water makes the mixture slack, so the balls can spread or fall apart in the stew. A stiff dough holds its shape and keeps the balls intact while they simmer.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, vinegar, pepper, parsley. 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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