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A Good English Stew

A hearty stew of beef cubes simmered with broth, lemon rind, and seasonings, finished with a thickening sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

A Good English Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Braise the beef

  1. Combine beef and broth in a pot and bring to a boil.

  2. Add salt and cayenne pepper, then reduce heat to simmer for 2 hours.

  3. Stir in grated lemon rind and simmer for another 30 minutes.

Thicken and finish

  1. Mix rice flour with mushroom catsup, lemon juice, and soy sauce, then stir into the stew.

  2. Cook for an additional 15 minutes until ready to serve.

  3. Optionally add port or white wine for flavor.

  4. Slip in fried forcemeat balls before serving.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  4. Rice + mushroomtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,515 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

Tender rump of beef
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, slow simmering.
Rice flour
Thickens the stewing liquid into a glossy sauce as it heats.
Mushroom catsup
Adds deep savoury umami flavour to the broth.
Grated lemon rind
Adds bright aromatic citrus oil that brightens the rich, heavy broth.

The step that matters

Simmering the beef gently. Beef needs a gentle, steady simmer over a long time so connective tissue breaks down into gelatin. A hard boil toughens the meat fibres and can leave them dry and chewy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, rice, flour, mushroom, sauce, white wine):

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Mangofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, rice, flour, mushroom, sauce, white wine. 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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