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Exeter Stew

A beef stew cooked slowly with onions, vinegar, and gravy, served with savory balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Exeter Stew

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove all fat from the beef.

  2. Cut the beef into 8 or 10 pieces.

  3. Place the meat in a stew jar with vinegar.

  4. Put the jar in a cool oven.

Make the gravy

  1. Heat the dripping in a frying pan.

  2. Fry the onions and flour until brown.

  3. Add water.

  4. Bring the water to a boil.

  5. Pour the boiling water over the meat in the jar.

  6. Season the stew.

  7. Cover the stew closely.

  8. Cook gently in the oven or on the stove for about 2 hours.

Make the savoury balls and serve

  1. Mix the ingredients for the savoury balls.

  2. Add water to bind the mixture into a stiff consistency.

  3. Form the mixture into 12 balls.

  4. Bring the stew to a boil.

  5. Drop the savoury balls into the stew.

  6. Simmer for 40 minutes.

  7. Pile the meat in the center of a hot dish.

  8. Strain the gravy over the meat.

  9. Arrange the savoury balls around the base.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Lean beef
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle cooking in liquid.
Dripping
Adds fat for frying the onions and flour, carrying savoury flavour into the gravy.
Flour
Browns with the fried onions and dripping to thicken the gravy.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they fry, adding savoury depth to the gravy.
Suet
Adds fat and richness to the savoury balls, keeping them moist and tender.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the savoury balls so they rise and lighten as they cook.

The step that matters

Bring the stew to a boil before dropping in the savoury balls. The balls need to cook in gently simmering liquid so they set and rise evenly. Dropping them into a stew that is not yet boiling can leave them dense or cause them to break apart as the liquid heats.

Swap the onion

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

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

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