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Stewed Rump

A slow‑cooked rump beef stew with beer, port wine, vinegar, ketchup, herbs, onions, cloves, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Stewed Rump

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Stewed Rump

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Half-roast the rump beef.

Stew

  1. Place it in a large pot with water, small beer, port wine, salt, vinegar, ketchup, and sweet herbs.

  2. Add onions, cloves, and a pinch of Cayenne pepper.

  3. Cover and simmer gently until tender.

Serve

  1. Serve in a deep dish, garnished with vegetables or pickles if desired.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Tarragon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together528 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Tarragon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Vinegar + tarragontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Beer + port winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together45 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Rump beef
Main cut that becomes tender and rich through long, gentle simmering.
Port wine
Adds depth, sweetness and aroma to the cooking liquid.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the stewing liquid and helps soften the meat.
Small beer
Adds liquid and a mild malty flavour to the braising liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until tender. Rump is a tough, lean cut. Gentle heat over a long time breaks down collagen into gelatin, making the meat tender and moist. Boiling hard toughens the muscle fibres and dries the outside.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, beer, port wine, vinegar, ketchup, tarragon, thyme):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Allspicefits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Celeryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, beer, port wine, vinegar, ketchup, tarragon, thyme. 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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