Skip to main content
Main

To Drefs Beef-Steaks the Common Way

Beef steaks are fried in butter, then stewed in a gravy of water, onion, walnut ketchup, and caper liquor.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Drefs Beef-Steaks the Common Way

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the steaks in butter until browned.

  2. Add water, diced onion, walnut ketchup, caper liquor, pepper, and salt.

  3. Cover with a dish and let stew gently.

  4. Once cooked, thicken the gravy with flour and butter.

  5. Serve the steaks with the gravy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Beef steaks
Main protein that browns in butter and becomes tender when stewed.
Butter
Fat that browns the steaks and enriches the gravy.
Onion
Softens while stewing and adds sweetness and savour to the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it combines with the cooking liquid.
Walnut ketchup
Adds deep, savoury, slightly tangy flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Stewing gently under a cover. Gentle, covered heat keeps the steaks tender and the liquid from reducing too fast. Boiling hard would toughen the meat and make the gravy uneven.

Swap the walnut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, 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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes