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Tinned Meat Stew

A stew of tinned meat, onions, butter, and optional ketchup or Worcestershire sauce, baked in the oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tinned Meat Stew

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Stew the onions in 1½ tablespoons of butter until thoroughly cooked.

  2. Cut the meat into slices about ½ inch thick.

  3. Divide the onions into two parts.

Layer and warm

  1. Place one part at the bottom of a clean frying pan.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Layer the meat slices on top of the onions and add ketchup or Worcestershire sauce if using.

  4. Cover the meat with the remaining onions.

  5. Cover the frying pan with a lid and warm the dish in the oven at 350°F (175°C).

  6. Add stock or water if necessary to prevent the stew from being too strong.

  7. Serve with potatoes or other vegetables.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Onion + meattop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,364 recipes

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

  5. Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Soften into a sweet base that cushions and flavours the meat.
Australian meat
Provides the main protein and savoury flavour of the stew.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to cook the onions and carry their flavour.

The step that matters

Stewing the onions until thoroughly cooked. Onions cooked slowly in butter turn soft and sweet as their sugars caramelise gently. If they are undercooked they stay sharp and raw-tasting, which would weaken the stew's flavour and texture.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Mustardfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, meat, pepper, ketchup. 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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