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A Delicious Way to Use Up Cold Roast Beef

A stew of cold roast beef with turnips, carrots, onion, currant jelly, wine, and a butter‑flour roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot 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 ↓

A Delicious Way to Use Up Cold Roast Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Combine the turnips, carrots, onion, and 1 quart of water in a skillet.

  2. Season the mixture with salt and pepper.

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

Finish the stew

  1. Add the cold roast beef and currant jelly to the skillet.

  2. In a separate bowl, rub together the butter and flour until smooth.

  3. Stir the butter-flour mixture into the skillet until the mixture thickens.

  4. Heat the wine and add it to the skillet, stirring to combine.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the stew's liquid as it cooks with the butter.
Butter
Combines with the flour to form a roux that helps thicken the stew.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity tang that balances the savory broth.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma that deepen the flavor of the stew.
Turnips
Contribute body and a mildly sharp, earthy flavor as they soften.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter-flour mixture into the skillet. Flour clumps if added raw to hot liquid. Rubbing it smooth with butter first and stirring it in gradually lets the starch disperse and thicken the stew evenly.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, carrot, onion, beef, butter, flour, wine):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, onion, beef, butter, flour, wine. 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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