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Staffordshire BeeJ Steaks

A stew of beefsteak pieces flavored with flour, salt, pepper, allspice, onion, and ketchup or Worcestershire sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Staffordshire BeeJ Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the beefsteak with the flour, salt, pepper, and allspice mixture.

  2. Slice the onion thinly and fry it in a little fat from the steak until light brown.

Cook and serve

  1. Lightly fry the seasoned steak in the same pan.

  2. Cut the steak into moderate-sized pieces and place in a stewpan.

  3. Add just enough water to create a sauce and stew gently for 30 minutes.

  4. Stir in a little ketchup or Worcestershire sauce and 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. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Flour + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Allspice + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Beefsteak
Provides the meat that becomes tender during gentle stewing.
Flour
Coats the steak and thickens the cooking liquid into a sauce.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savour as it browns in the steak fat.

The step that matters

Stewing gently with just enough water. Gentle heat lets the connective tissue in the steak soften without toughening the meat. Too much water dilutes the sauce, while boiling hard can make the meat firm and dry.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper, allspice, ketchup. 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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