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Beefsteak Fried with Onions

A steak fried in lard and served with a gravy of onions, water, pepper, salt, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beefsteak Fried with Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and fry

  1. Season the steak with pepper and roll it in flour.

  2. Fry the steak in lard until done, then remove it from the pan.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Add chopped onion, pepper, salt, water, and a little mustard to the pan.

  2. Cook for a few minutes, then return the steak to the gravy and let it sit briefly.

  3. Serve hot.

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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Steak
Provides the main protein, which browns in the hot lard and firms as it cooks through.
Flour
Coats the steak so it browns in the fat and helps thicken the pan liquids into gravy.
Onion
Softens in the pan and adds sweetness and savory depth to the gravy.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and adds richness and browning to the steak.

The step that matters

Return the steak to the gravy and let it sit briefly. The gravy should be thick enough to coat the meat before the steak returns, since flour thickens only once it has been heated in liquid. Letting the steak rest briefly in the gravy lets it absorb flavor and stay warm, while overcooking it in the gravy would toughen it.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, flour, mustard):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, mustard. 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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