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Steak Sinolaise

A steak cooked with onions, herbs, spices, and a rich gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Steak Sinolaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the steak clean and make 3-4 incisions in it.

  2. Insert garlic cloves into the incisions if desired.

  3. Sprinkle the steak with salt, pepper, and vinegar; let it stand for 30 minutes.

Fry and braise

  1. Heat a flat saucepan large enough for the steak and spread sweet lard on both sides of the steak.

  2. Coat the steak thickly with flour and fry it under cover until light brown on both sides.

  3. Slice the onions and chop the herbs; place them on the meat.

  4. Add the clove, spices, and bay leaves.

  5. Cover the steak with cold water, put on the lid, and let it simmer slowly until a rich, thick gravy forms.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with plain boiled rice.

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef or veal steak
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during slow simmering.
Flour
Coats the steak so it browns in the fat and thickens the gravy.
Sweet lard
Conducts heat for frying and adds richness and browning to the surface.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that helps tenderize the surface of the meat before cooking.
Silver-skin onions
Add sweetness and aroma that flavor the gravy as it simmers.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that mellows and infuses the meat during cooking.

The step that matters

Frying the floured steak under cover. Flour coating browns through the Maillard reaction in hot fat, building flavor and color. Too little heat or too much moisture leaves it pale and steamed, and the gravy later thins and lacks depth.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, garlic, pepper, vinegar, flour, onion, parsley):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, garlic, pepper, vinegar, flour, onion, parsley. 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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