Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Beef

A slow-cooked beef dish with vegetables and aromatic spices, finished with a flour-based gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Stewed Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the beef with coarse sea salt, pepper, and flour.

  2. Place the beef in a tightly covered kettle with a flat bottom.

  3. Add the chopped onion, potato, turnip, and carrot on top of the meat.

  4. Sprinkle cinnamon, mace, and clove over the vegetables.

  5. Pour in enough cold water to cover the meat.

Stew and thicken

  1. Bring to a boil, skim off the scum, then cover tightly and simmer for five hours.

  2. After four hours, mix ½ cup of flour with cold water and add to the pot.

  3. Taste and adjust seasoning if necessary.

Serve

  1. Serve the meat with some gravy and the rest in a gravy tureen.

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 + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 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
Tough cut that becomes tender and flavourful through long, slow simmering.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy as it is added near the end.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma to the broth as it softens.
Potato
Softens into the liquid, adding body and starch to the gravy.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and colour to the stew.
Turnip
Softens during simmering, adding mild sweetness and body to the stew.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum after boiling. Foam that rises when the liquid first boils contains coagulated proteins and impurities. Removing it keeps the broth clear and free of off flavours before the long simmer.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Cinnamonthe original

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

More stewed beef recipes

Steaks 20Steak 9Tongue 6Kidney 5Loin 3Shin 3 See all 14 →

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipes