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Stewed Rump

A slow‑cooked beef rump simmered with wine, beer, herbs, and optional mushrooms, truffles, morels, or oysters, thickened with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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 beef rump.

Stew the beef

  1. Place the roast in a large pot with water, small beer, port wine, salt, vinegar, ketchup, herbs, onions, cloves, and Cayenne pepper.

  2. Cover and simmer for 2–3 hours until tender.

Finish the gravy and serve

  1. Transfer the meat to a deep dish.

  2. Keep the meat warm over hot water.

  3. Skim the gravy.

  4. Add pickled mushrooms, truffles, morels, and oysters if desired.

  5. Thicken the gravy with flour and butter.

  6. Heat the thickened gravy.

  7. Pour the gravy over the beef.

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

Beef rump
Forms the main body of the dish; slow simmering breaks down its connective tissue until tender.
Port wine
Adds depth, sweetness and acidity to the braising liquid, colouring the gravy.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the gravy and helps balance the rich meat.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as its starch swells when heated in the liquid.
Butter
Enriches the thickened gravy, adding fat for smooth texture and flavour.

The step that matters

Simmering until tender. Rump is a tough cut, so it needs gentle, covered simmering long enough for collagen to soften into gelatin. Boiling hard toughens the meat and leaves it stringy.

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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