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Brown Stew

A beef stew with onions, carrots, turnip, and a brown sauce made from butter, flour, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Brown Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat into serving pieces and pour vinegar over it.

  2. Let it marinate for at least 1 hour, turning occasionally.

  3. Drain and dry the meat well.

  4. Cut some of the carrot into julienne strips and set aside.

Brown and build the sauce

  1. Heat the butter or fat in a stewpan and fry the meat quickly until lightly browned.

  2. Remove the meat.

  3. In the same pan, add the onion, remaining carrot, and turnip, and fry until browned.

  4. Sprinkle in the flour, stir, and cook until nicely browned.

  5. Add the water and bring to a boil while stirring.

  6. Simmer gently for 15 minutes.

Stew and serve

  1. Cool slightly and return the meat to the pan.

  2. Season to taste.

  3. Cook slowly for 2½ hours.

  4. Arrange the meat on a hot dish.

  5. Strain the sauce over it.

  6. Garnish with the cooked julienne vegetables.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

Neck of beef
Slow cooking in the stew turns the tough connective tissue tender and rich.
Flour
Browned with the fat, it thickens the liquid and adds nutty, toasted flavour to the sauce.
Butter or fat
Carries heat for frying the meat and vegetables, adding browning and richness.
Onion
Softens and browns during frying, adding sweetness and savoury depth to the sauce.
Vinegar
Its acidity softens the meat's surface during the marinade and adds a bright note.

The step that matters

Brown the meat quickly and properly. Browning creates Maillard flavour compounds that give the stew its colour and depth. The meat must be dry, or it steams instead of browning, so drying it well before frying matters.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

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