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Stewed Beef

A slow-cooked beef stew with water, broth, vinegar, herbs, onions, and a butter-flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,979 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Stewed Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Marinate

  1. Place the beef in a deep kettle with water, broth, vinegar, parsley, cloves, marjoram, salt, and pepper.

  2. Let it marinate overnight, turning occasionally, especially in warm weather.

Simmer and thicken

  1. The next day, simmer for 4 to 5 hours, adding chopped onions.

  2. If more liquid is needed while stewing, add broth, gravy, or water.

  3. Remove the meat and mix butter and flour into the strained liquid.

  4. Add a dash of mushroom ketchup and pour over the meat before serving.

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. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Clove + marjoramtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Marjoram + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Round of beef
Long simmering breaks down tough connective tissue, leaving the meat tender and moist.
Vinegar
Its acidity helps tenderize the meat during the overnight marinade.
Onions
They add savory sweetness and body to the cooking liquid as they soften.
Flour
Mixed with butter and stirred into the strained liquid, it thickens the sauce.

The step that matters

Keep the simmer gentle and check the liquid. A rolling boil toughens meat proteins and can evaporate the liquid too fast, so a gentle simmer with added liquid as needed keeps the beef tender and the sauce from drying out.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, vinegar, parsley, clove, marjoram, pepper, butter):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, vinegar, parsley, clove, marjoram, pepper, butter. 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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