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To Stew Beef

A slow‑cooked beef stew with carrots, celery, onions, herbs, and optional wine and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

To Stew Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Simmer the beef

  1. Place the beef in a pot.

  2. Cover the pot with cold water.

  3. Bring the water to a boil.

  4. Boil for 3-4 hours, depending on the size of the meat.

  5. Add diced carrots, celery, sweet herbs, peppercorns, mace, and onions to the pot.

  6. Simmer for 2-3 hours, skimming off any grease that forms on top.

  7. Once the meat is tender, remove the onions from the pot.

Make the gravy

  1. Mince the onions.

  2. Sauté the minced onions in butter.

  3. Mix the sautéed onions into the gravy from the pot.

  4. Add mushroom or walnut ketchup.

  5. Thicken the gravy with flour.

  6. Brown the gravy with burnt sugar for color and flavor.

  7. Add port wine.

  8. Add curry powder.

  9. Add a clove of garlic if desired.

Serve

  1. Garnish with vegetables 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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  4. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Long simmering breaks down connective tissue, making the meat tender and enriching the broth.
Flour
Starch thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, cohesive gravy.
Sugar
Burnt sugar adds deep brown color and a slightly bitter, caramel flavor to the gravy.
Onions
Softened and minced onions add sweetness and savory depth to the gravy.
Mushroom or walnut ketchup
Adds concentrated savory, umami flavor to the gravy.

The step that matters

Browning the gravy with burnt sugar. Sugar darkens and caramelizes when heated, but if it burns too far it turns bitter. Heating it gently until deep amber gives color and flavor without spoiling the gravy.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, meat, carrot, celery, mace, onion, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, meat, carrot, celery, mace, onion, 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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