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To Stew the Silver Side of the Round

A stew of silver side of the round beef with bacon, herbs, onions, tomatoes, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

To Stew the Silver Side of the Round

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Make holes in each side of the beef with a sharp knife.

  2. Chop the sweet herbs and shallot, and mix with pepper, salt, and mace.

  3. Roll the bacon slices in the herb mixture and fill the holes in the beef.

  4. Tie a string around the beef for support.

Stew and serve

  1. Place the beef in a stewpan with stock, onions, and tomatoes (or tomato sauce).

  2. Stew until the beef is very tender.

  3. Remove the beef and strain the gravy, discarding the fat.

  4. Serve the beef on a dish and pour the strained gravy over it.

  5. Garnish with boiled onions.

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. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Parsley + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Basil + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through long slow stewing.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that bastes the lean beef from within as it cooks.
Onions
Break down during stewing, adding sweetness and body to the gravy.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the stewing liquid, rounding out the gravy's flavor.
Stock
Provides the liquid that cooks the beef and becomes the base of the gravy.

The step that matters

Stew until the beef is very tender. Beef round is lean and tough, and its connective tissue only softens into gelatin with prolonged, gentle simmering. Cutting the stew short leaves the meat chewy, while boiling hard can toughen it.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, tomato, parsley, basil, shallot, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, tomato, parsley, basil, shallot, 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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