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Beef

A beef stew simmered with pickle slices, walnuts or onions, shallots, butter, veal stock, ketchup, cayenne pepper, sea salt, and browning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 440 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. In a stew pan, place the sliced beef with pickle slices, walnuts, or onions.

  2. In a separate pan, melt fresh butter over low heat and sauté chopped shallots or onions until soft.

  3. Add 1 pint of veal stock or gravy and a little ketchup to the sautéed mixture, and boil for 10 minutes.

  4. Season with Cayenne pepper and coarse sea salt, then strain the sauce over the beef.

Stew and finish

  1. Let the beef stew gently until thoroughly hot, then add a small quantity of browning.

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. Walnut + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together440 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Beef + vealtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  5. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Thinly sliced beef
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender as it gently stews in the sauce.
Veal stock or gravy
Provides the liquid base that the sauce is built on and carries the savoury flavour.
Fresh butter
Softens the shallots or onions gently, adding richness to the sauce.
Chopped shallots or onions
Cooked until soft, they add sweetness and body to the sauce.
Slices of pickle
Adds acidity that sharpens the rich, savoury sauce.

The step that matters

Letting the beef stew gently until thoroughly hot. Boiling hard can toughen meat proteins and make them dry, while gentle heat lets the beef soften and warm evenly through the sauce.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, shallot, butter, veal, ketchup, pepper):

  1. Beansfits about as well
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Peasfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, shallot, butter, veal, ketchup, pepper. 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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