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Stewed Beefsteaks

Stewed beefsteaks cooked with butter, onion, walnut ketchup, wine, water, flour, salt, pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stewed Beefsteaks

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Heat a stew pan over low heat.

  2. Add the steak with 2 tablespoons of butter. Cook the steak until the butter forms a white gravy.

  3. Pour the gravy into a bowl.

  4. Add more butter to the steak. Cook until done.

Stew and serve

  1. Return the gravy to the pan.

  2. Fry the steak. Add the steak back to the gravy.

  3. Stir in 1 tablespoon of wine and the sliced onion. Stew for 10 minutes.

  4. Alternatively, fry the steak slightly.

  5. Add ½ cup of water, onion, walnut ketchup, pepper, and salt. Cover and simmer until cooked.

  6. Thicken with flour.

  7. 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 + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Walnut + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Ketchup + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Steak
Provides the meat that is browned and then stewed until tender.
Butter
Fries the steak and forms the white gravy that becomes the base of the sauce.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it softens in the stew.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smoother, heavier sauce.
Walnut ketchup
Adds a dark, savory, tangy flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the steak until the butter forms a white gravy. Butter that is heated too hard browns and turns bitter, while gentle heat lets its milk solids and fat separate into a pale, flavorful gravy. Overheating spoils the base of the sauce.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, walnut, ketchup, pepper, 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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