A stew recipe states that of the whole stew should be beef. Marika made her stew with 4 pounds of beef. What was the total weight of the stew if she followed the recipe?

10 pounds.

Step-by-step explanation:

In this scenario, we can use the Rule of Three to solve for the whole weight of the stew. This rule is used for ratio problems. You simply need to multiply the available diagonal values together and then divide by the remaining value to get the value of the single variable in the ratio. Like so...

40%   <>  4 pounds

100%  <>  x pounds

(100 * 4) / 40 = x pounds

400 / 40 = x pounds

10 = x pounds

Finally, we can see that the total weight of the stew if she followed the original recipe would be 10 pounds.