Skip to main content
Main

Beef Stew with Macaroni

A stew of beef, potatoes, and macaroni with dumplings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,052 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Beef Stew with Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the stew

  1. Flour the pieces of beef to enhance the gravy's consistency.

  2. Scald the potatoes to remove strong taste, then place them on top of the meat in an iron pot.

Cook

  1. Cover the pot tightly and cook in a 300°F (150°C) oven for several hours.

  2. In a separate pot, boil water and cook the macaroni until tender.

  3. Drain the macaroni and season it before returning it to the pot to keep warm.

Add dumplings and serve

  1. Mix baking powder with milk to create a dumpling batter, then drop spoonfuls onto the stew.

  2. Cover and steam the dumplings for 12 minutes 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. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, slow cooking.
Flour
Coats the beef and thickens the gravy as it cooks.
Potatoes
Soften during cooking and add starch that adds body to the stew.
Macaroni
Adds bulk and soft texture to the dish when cooked until tender.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the dumplings rise and become light.

The step that matters

Cover the pot tightly and cook slowly. A tight lid traps moisture so the stew stays wet and the beef becomes tender rather than dry. Low, steady oven heat over several hours breaks down the connective tissue in the meat.

“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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes