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Exeter Stew

A beef stew with carrots, turnips, and brown gravy, seasoned with vinegar, salt, pepper, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Exeter Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat and gravy

  1. Cut the meat into nice pieces and marinate in vinegar.

  2. Prepare the brown gravy, adding more onions but do not strain it.

  3. Remove the meat from the vinegar and place it in a stew pan or jar.

Stew and prepare vegetables

  1. Pour the hot gravy over the meat and stew gently for 2 to 4 hours.

  2. Prepare the carrots and turnips by cutting them into strips about 2 inches long and ½ inch thick.

  3. Steam or boil the vegetables in just enough salted water to cover them for 30 minutes or until soft.

Serve

  1. To serve, place the meat and gravy on a hot dish and pile the vegetables on top, garnishing with parsley.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 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

Shin of beef
Long gentle stewing turns this tough cut tender and gives the stew body.
Vinegar
Acidity in the marinade helps loosen the meat's texture before stewing.
Brown gravy
Forms the cooking liquid, carrying moisture and savoury browned flavour into the meat.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and a soft, tender texture when cooked.
Turnips
Contribute a mild, slightly peppery flavour and soft texture when cooked.

The step that matters

Stewing the meat gently. Gentle, low-heat simmering lets collagen in the shin break down into gelatin, making the meat tender. Boiling hard toughens muscle fibres and can leave the meat stringy.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, vinegar, pepper, parsley):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Parsnipfits about as well
  3. Turnipthe original
  4. Potatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, vinegar, pepper, parsley. 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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