Skip to main content
Main

To Stew Steaks

A stew of thinly sliced beef with carrot, turnip, ketchup, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

To Stew Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and stew

  1. Cut the beef into thin slices.

  2. Place the beef in a stew pan with the hot water.

  3. Add the grated carrot, diced turnip, pepper, and salt.

  4. Stew for 1 hour or until tender, skimming if necessary.

Thicken and finish

  1. Thicken the stew with flour and ketchup.

  2. Optionally, add 2 oz of boiled macaroni or vermicelli.

  3. Cook for 10 to 20 minutes.

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. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  3. Flour + turniptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + turniptop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef steak
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through long, gentle stewing.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a body-rich sauce as it heats.
Turnip
Adds mild sweetness and soft texture as it cooks down in the stew.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body to the stew, softening as it simmers.

The step that matters

Stewing until tender. Beef is tough collagen-rich muscle, and it needs a long, low simmer to break down into tenderness. Stopping early leaves the meat chewy, while a vigorous boil can toughen it and make the broth cloudy.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Leekfits about as well
  2. Horseradishfits about as well
  3. Arrowrootfits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

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

More stewed steak recipes

with Oysters 11and Macaroni 3 See all 40 →

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes