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Hough of Beef Stewed

A stew of hough of beef with carrots, turnip, onions, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Hough of Beef Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Remove the marrow from the bone and cut it into small bits.

  2. Heat the marrow in a stew pan and brown the meat on all sides.

Stew

  1. Pour off excess fat and add 2 cups of water.

  2. Cover and stew slowly for 1 hour.

  3. Add the carrot, turnip, and onions, then stew for an additional 1.5 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve the meat with vegetables and pour gravy over it.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 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

Hough of beef
Tough connective tissue that softens into tender meat during slow stewing.
Marrow (in the method)
Melts into the pan, adding richness and fat for browning the meat.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they stew, adding savory depth to the gravy.

The step that matters

Brown the meat on all sides. Browning creates deep flavour through the Maillard reaction, which stewing alone cannot produce. Pat the meat dry and sear in batches so it browns rather than steams.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, ketchup, flour, pepper, carrot, turnip):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, ketchup, flour, pepper, carrot, turnip. 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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