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A Very Good Way to Fry Beef-Steaks

Fried beef steaks served with a butter and walnut ketchup gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 440 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

A Very Good Way to Fry Beef-Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the steaks as for broiling.

  2. Heat a skillet and add butter.

Make the gravy

  1. Cook the steaks over low heat, turning until the butter becomes a thick white gravy.

  2. Pour the gravy into a bowl.

  3. Add more butter to the skillet.

  4. When the steaks are nearly done, pour the gravy back into the skillet.

  5. Fry the steaks until light brown over high heat.

Serve

  1. Transfer the steaks to a hot serving dish.

  2. Slice a shallot and add the shallot to the gravy.

  3. Pour the gravy hot over the steaks.

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. Shallot + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  4. Shallot + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef steaks
Provides the main meat, which browns and firms as it cooks in butter.
Butter
Cooks down with the heat into the thick white gravy and adds richness and browning to the steaks.
Flour
Thickens the butter and meat juices into a gravy by absorbing liquid and gelatinizing with heat.

The step that matters

Cook the steaks over low heat until the butter becomes a thick white gravy. Low heat lets the butter and meat juices slowly form a stable gravy without burning. Too much heat early can scorch the butter and turn the gravy brown and bitter.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Sesamefits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, shallot, onion, 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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