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Exeter Stew

A beef stew from Exeter with onions, vinegar, and 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove all fat from the meat and cut it into 8 or 10 pieces.

  2. Place the meat in a stewing jar with the vinegar and put it in a cooking oven.

Make the gravy

  1. Heat the dripping in a frying pan, fry the sliced onions and flour until brown.

  2. Add the water, bring to a boil, and pour it over the meat in the jar.

  3. Season, cover closely, and cook gently in the oven or on the stove for 3 hours.

Make the balls and serve

  1. Mix the ingredients for the savoury balls together, adding water to bind into a stiff mixture, and form into 12 balls.

  2. About 40 minutes before serving, bring the stew to a boil, drop in the balls, and simmer for 40 minutes.

  3. To serve, pile the meat in the center of a hot dish, strain the gravy over, and arrange the 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 during long, gentle cooking.
Flour
Frying the flour with onions until brown thickens the gravy and adds colour and savoury flavour.
Dripping
Fat for frying the onions and flour, carrying flavour into the gravy.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that helps tenderise the meat and brightens the stew.
Suet
Fat that keeps the savoury balls moist and light as they cook.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the savoury balls rise and turn light.

The step that matters

Adding the balls to the stew. The balls must be dropped into gently boiling stew and simmered covered so they cook through and stay light. Boiling too hard can break them apart, while cooking them too early can make them dense and soggy.

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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