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Brown Beef Stew

A hearty stew of beef cubes, flour, suet, stock, onion, carrot, bay leaf, pepper, and kitchen bouquet, cooked slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Brown Beef Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Roll the beef cubes in flour.

  2. Melt the suet in a saucepan over heat, then remove the cracklings.

  3. Add the beef to the pan and brown slightly.

Make the sauce

  1. Move the meat to one side, add flour to the fat, and stir until smooth.

  2. Gradually add the stock, salt, onion, bay leaf, carrot, pepper, and kitchen bouquet.

Cook

  1. Combine everything in a Caloric kettle and cook for three hours using both radiators.

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 + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Beef + carrottop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,606 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

Beef
Provides the main meat; long cooking tenderises its connective tissue into a tender texture.
Flour
Thickens the stew as its starch swells in the hot fat and liquid.
Suet
Adds fat for browning the beef and carries savoury flavour through the stew.
Stock
Forms the cooking liquid that gives the stew its body and savoury base.
Onion
Adds aroma and a little sweetness as it softens during cooking.
Carrot
Adds gentle sweetness and body to the finished stew.

The step that matters

Brown the beef slightly. Browning develops deeper flavour through the Maillard reaction. Crowding the pan or stirring too early steams the meat instead, leaving it grey and flat-tasting.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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