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Stewed Beef

A simple stew of beef, carrot, turnip, onion, and ketchup, simmered with flour and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Stewed Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean, prepare, and slice the carrot and turnip; skin, scald, and slice the onion.

  2. Brown the beef in a stew pan, then brown the vegetables slightly.

Make the stew

  1. Pour away the dripping; add the water and ketchup to the beef and vegetables.

  2. Break the flour with a little water and stir it smoothly into the mixture.

  3. Simmer with the lid on for an hour, stirring frequently to prevent sticking.

  4. When nearly ready, add the salt and pepper.

Serve

  1. Arrange neatly on a dish and serve hot, garnished with small pieces of toast.

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. Carrot + peppertop 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

Stewing beef
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during slow simmering.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, lightly bodied gravy.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and sweetness as it softens and browns in the dripping.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and body to the stew as it cooks down in the liquid.
Turnip
Adds mild sweetness and texture as it becomes tender in the stew.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour in smoothly. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps, because its starch granules coat themselves in lumps before they can disperse. Mixing it first into a smooth paste with a little water lets the starch hydrate evenly, so the gravy thickens without lumps.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

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