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Rump Steaks to Stew

A stew of rump steaks simmered with onions, wine, and a tomato‑based sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rump Steaks to Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the steaks

  1. Melt the butter in a stew-pan and add the sliced onions.

  2. Add the rump steaks and brown them on one side, then turn to brown the other side.

Stew

  1. Boil the button onions in water for 45 minutes.

  2. Strain the button onions and pour the liquid over the steaks.

  3. If needed, add more water or broth to cover the steaks, then season with salt and peppercorns.

  4. Stew gently for 30 minutes.

  5. Strain off the liquid for sauce.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a saucepan, thicken the strained liquid with browned flour or roux.

  2. Add catsup, cayenne, and red wine to the sauce.

  3. Serve the steaks on a dish and pour the sauce over them, garnishing with boiled onions.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + red winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,599 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Onion + red winetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Rump steaks
Main protein that becomes tender during slow stewing in liquid.
Browned flour or roux
Thickens the strained liquid into a body-rich sauce.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Onions
Sweeten and flavour the stewing liquid as they cook down.
Butter
Adds fat and helps the onions and steaks take on colour.

The step that matters

Browning the steaks. Browning creates flavourful Maillard reactions on the meat surface. Pale, under-browned steaks yield a flatter-tasting sauce and stew.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, tea, flour, red wine):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, tea, flour, red wine. 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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