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Beef Stew with Dumplings

A hearty beef stew with dumplings made from flour, baking powder, milk, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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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 ↓

Beef Stew with Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the beef and vegetables

  1. Trim all fat from the beef and place it in a stewpan.

  2. Fry gently for 10 to 15 minutes.

  3. Add the chopped vegetables and fry in the hot fat for 10 minutes.

  4. Cut the beef into 1‑inch squares, season with salt and pepper, and rub in 2 tablespoons of flour.

  5. Add the beef to the stewpan and stir until it begins to brown.

Simmer the stew

  1. Pour in the water and bring to a boil. Skim off any foam.

  2. Reduce heat and let it simmer for 2.5 hours.

  3. Add the sliced potatoes and 1 tablespoon of flour mixed with 1 cup of water.

  4. Boil for 10 minutes.

Make and add the dumplings

  1. For the dumplings, mix 1 pint of flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar in a bowl. Sift the mixture.

  2. Wet the dry ingredients with 1 small cup of milk and mix into a smooth dough.

  3. Roll out the dough to ½ inch thick and cut with a biscuit cutter.

  4. Add the dumplings to the stew and boil hard for 15 minutes, ensuring it does not burn.

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

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

  3. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 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

Round beef
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, slow simmering.
Flour
Dusted on the beef and stirred into the broth to thicken the stew.
Potatoes
Soften during simmering and add starch that helps thicken the broth.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dumpling dough so the dumplings rise and turn light.
Milk
Moistens the dry dumpling ingredients into a dough and adds richness.

The step that matters

Boil the dumplings hard without letting the stew burn. Dumplings must cook fully in simmering liquid, and a vigorous boil while covered helps them set and rise. Stirring gently near the bottom prevents scorching on the pan.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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