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Beef Stewed with Vegetables

A stew of beef with onions, turnips, carrots, and butter, thickened with flour and flavored with ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot 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 ↓

Beef Stewed with Vegetables

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the beef into convenient-sized pieces and fry in butter until browned on both sides.

  2. Clean and peel the vegetables. Slice the onions and carrots, and dice the turnips.

  3. Fry the vegetables in the fat from the beef.

Simmer and thicken

  1. Combine the beef and vegetables in a saucepan, add water, and simmer gently for 2 to 3 hours.

  2. Skim the surface, then add salt, pepper, and ketchup.

  3. Mix the flour with 2 tablespoons of cold water, then add to the stew to thicken.

  4. Boil for 1 to 2 minutes after thickening, then serve.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 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

Beef
Provides the main body of the stew, becoming tender during long, gentle simmering.
Butter
Fat for browning the beef and adds richness to the frying stage.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, adding savoury depth to the stew.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, lightly bodied gravy.
Turnips
Hold their shape during simmering and add mild, earthy flavour.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and a firm texture that holds up to long cooking.

The step that matters

Simmer gently and skim before adding flour. A gentle simmer keeps the beef tender without toughening its proteins, and skimming removes fat and scum that would make the gravy greasy. Adding flour to a well-skimmed liquid gives a smoother, more even thickening.

Swap the onion

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

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

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