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Brunswick Stew

A hearty stew of chicken, bacon, tomatoes, corn, potatoes, and beans simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Brunswick Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew base

  1. Combine water, bacon, and sliced onion in a large soup pot.

  2. Bring to a boil and cook for 1 hour.

Add the vegetables and chicken

  1. Add tomatoes, corn, diced potatoes, and butter beans. Bring to a boil again.

  2. Add chickens cut into pieces. Cook until the chicken falls off the bone.

  3. Remove the bones and skin.

Thicken and season

  1. Thicken the stew with the bread crumbs.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and your choice of catsup or sauce.

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. Tomato + beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  2. Corn + beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  4. Corn + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Potato + beanstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together655 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the meat that becomes tender and falls off the bone during long simmering.
Bread crumbs
Thicken the stew by absorbing liquid and giving it body.
Potatoes
Release starch into the broth, adding body and substance to the stew.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and liquid that builds the stew's savory flavor.
Bacon
Adds smoky, savory fat that flavors the broth from the start.

The step that matters

Simmer the chicken until it falls off the bone. Chicken needs sustained simmering to become tender and release its flavor into the broth. Stopping early leaves meat tough and clinging to the bones, so the cook should judge by texture rather than time.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, corn, potato, butter, beans, chicken, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Okrafits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, corn, potato, butter, beans, chicken, bread. 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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