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A Very Good Way to Fry Beef-Steaks

Fried beef steaks served with a walnut ketchup and caper liquor gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and shallot 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 beef steaks as for broiling.

Make the gravy

  1. Heat a skillet and add the butter.

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

  3. Pour the gravy into a bowl.

  4. Add more butter to the skillet.

  5. Return the gravy to the skillet.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the steaks until light brown over medium-high heat.

  2. Remove the steaks from the skillet and place them in a hot serving dish.

  3. Slice the shallot and add it to the gravy.

  4. Pour the hot gravy 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. Walnut + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together440 recipes

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

  2. Flour + shallottop 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. Onion + shallottop 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
Form the main body of the dish and brown on the outside when fried.
Butter
Cooks down with the steak juices into a thick gravy and provides fat for frying the steaks.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a gravy by absorbing moisture and swelling when heated.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma to the gravy as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cooking the steaks over low heat until the butter becomes a thick gravy. Low heat lets butter and meat juices reduce slowly without scorching, so the gravy thickens smoothly rather than burning or turning dark and bitter.

Swap the walnut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, onion, ketchup, pepper, flour, shallot. 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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