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Stewed Beet Boot

A stew of beetroot cooked in veal gravy, thickened with arrowroot and finished with cream and chili vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beetroot and arrowroot share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stewed Beet Boot

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beetroot

  1. Bake or boil the beetroot until tender, then let it cool.

  2. Pare and slice the beetroot.

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the sliced beetroot in veal gravy or broth for a short time.

  2. Thicken the gravy with arrowroot and stir in the cream.

  3. Add chili vinegar just 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. Beetroot + arrowroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together25 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beetroot + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,630 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Arrowroot + vinegartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Arrowroot + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Beetroot + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together407 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Beetroot
Forms the main body of the dish and gives it its earthy flavour and colour.
Veal gravy or broth
Provides the savoury liquid in which the beetroot is heated.
Arrowroot
Thickens the gravy into a smooth, glossy sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the sauce.
Chili vinegar
Adds sharp acidity and heat that cut through the richness.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with arrowroot. Arrowroot thickens best when stirred into a liquid that is hot but not boiling, and it loses thickening power if boiled for long. Adding it to a rapidly boiling gravy can leave it thin or cloudy, so the sauce should be kept at a gentle heat once the cream goes in.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beetroot, veal, cream, vinegar):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beetroot, veal, cream, vinegar. 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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