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A Good English Stew

A hearty beef stew with lemon rind, mushroom ketchup, and rice flour thickening.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

A Good English Stew

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the beef and broth in a large pot and bring to a boil.

  2. Add salt and cayenne pepper, then reduce heat to simmer for 2 hours.

  3. Stir in the grated lemon rind.

  4. Mix the rice flour with mushroom ketchup, lemon juice, and soy sauce, then add the mixture to the pot.

  5. Cook for an additional 15 minutes until ready to serve.

  6. For added flavor, incorporate port or white wine.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Rice + mushroomtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,515 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

Rump of beef
Becomes tender during the long simmer, giving the stew its meaty body.
Rice flour
Thickens the cooking liquid so the stew has a fuller, gravy-like texture.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds deep savoury, umami flavour to the broth.
Lemon rind
Adds bright aromatic citrus oils that lift the richness of the beef.
Port or white wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the broth.

The step that matters

Adding the rice flour mixture. Flour clumps if it hits hot liquid unmixed. Blending it first with the liquid ingredients keeps it smooth, so it thickens the stew evenly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, rice, flour, mushroom, ketchup, sauce. 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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