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Beef Stew

A hearty stew of beef, onions, thyme, bay leaf, and vinegar simmered slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,585 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Beef Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef and onions

  1. Remove all fat from the beef and cut it into pieces about 2x3 inches.

  2. Heat the sweet drippings in a frying pan until very hot.

  3. Add the beef pieces. Turn the beef pieces in order as they cook.

  4. Transfer them to a stew pan.

  5. Fry the onions until slightly browned, being careful not to burn them.

Make the stew

  1. Add the browned onions, thyme, bay leaf, salt, and pepper to the beef in the stew pan.

  2. Barely cover the meat with boiling water.

  3. Add the vinegar.

  4. Simmer gently for 1.5 hours.

Thicken and finish

  1. Mix the flour and butter until nicely browned. Blend with some sauce from the meat.

  2. Stir this mixture into the stew pan.

  3. Add a pinch of sugar. Mix well.

  4. Boil for an additional 15 minutes.

  5. Check if the meat is tender. If not, let it simmer a little longer.

  6. Serve with a border of plain boiled macaroni or rice.

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. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Thyme + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together326 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 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 meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a richer sauce when blended with butter and sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the flour mixture that thickens the sauce.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth when fried until lightly browned.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich stew.

The step that matters

Fry the onions until slightly browned, being careful not to burn them.. Light browning develops sweet, savoury flavours through the Maillard reaction, while burnt onions turn bitter and can spoil the whole stew.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, thyme, pepper, vinegar, flour, butter):

  1. Black-eyed peafits better
  2. Sesamefits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, thyme, pepper, vinegar, flour, butter. 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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