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Stewed Beef

A slow-cooked beef stew with salt pork, onion, tomato catsup, and flour thickening.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Stewed Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Fry pieces of salt pork with chopped onion until brown.

  2. Add the beef and cover with water.

  3. Boil slowly for 4 hours.

Finish the gravy

  1. Thicken the gravy with flour.

  2. Stir in 1 tablespoon of tomato catsup for seasoning.

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 + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

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

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

  3. Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 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

Beef
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during long, slow simmering.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor as it browns in the pot.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy.
Tomato catsup
Adds sweetness, acidity and savory depth to the gravy.

The step that matters

Boil slowly for 4 hours. A gentle simmer lets connective tissue in the beef break down slowly, giving tender meat. A hard, fast boil toughens the surface and can make the meat stringy and dry, so keep the liquid at a quiet simmer.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, onion, flour):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, onion, flour. 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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