Name: Beef Stew, with Tinned Mushrooms
Ingredients: 1 pound beef; 1 pint tinned mushrooms; 2 tablespoons butter; ¼ teaspoon pepper; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt'); juice of 1 lemon; 1 cup good stock

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Beef Stew, with Tinned Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Pare the mushrooms, cut the ends off, and place them in cold water.

Make the stew

Melt the butter in a stewpan and add the mushrooms, pepper, salt, and lemon juice.
Simmer until tender, about 25 minutes.
Cut the beef into small pieces, flour well, and add to the stewpan.
Add the stock and simmer for an additional 4 minutes.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,232 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,971 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,580 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef: Provides the meat; slow simmering breaks down connective tissue so it turns tender.
Mushrooms: Add moisture, earthy flavour, and a soft, tender texture as they cook.
Butter: Adds fat for richness and carries flavour when the mushrooms are melted in it.
Stock: Supplies the cooking liquid and savoury flavour that the stew is built on.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the mushroom and beef flavours.

The step that matters

Cut the beef small and flour it well before adding it. Small pieces cook through within the simmering time, and an even coat of flour lightly thickens the stock around the meat so the sauce does not turn thin and watery.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, mushroom, butter, pepper):

Lemonthe original
Mangofits about as well
Plumfits about as well
Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, mushroom, butter, 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.

Lemon Sauce236 recipes

Roast Beef211 recipes

Beef Loaf175 recipes

Corned Beef87 recipes

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Beef Stew, with Tinned Mushrooms