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Beefsteak Smothered with Onions

A steak cooked in butter and onions, finished with a simple gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Beefsteak Smothered with Onions

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan.

  2. Cover the bottom of the pan with the sliced onions.

  3. Lay the steak over the onions.

  4. Fry the onions until tender.

  5. Cover the steak with the cooked onions and add more butter if needed.

  6. Once cooked, place the steak on a platter and heap the onions on top.

  7. Make a small amount of gravy in the pan, seasoning it with salt and pepper, and pour it over the meat.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Beefsteak
Forms the main body of the dish and provides the meat that is cooked and served.
Onions
Soften as they cook, becoming sweet and forming a tender topping for the steak.
Butter
Fats the pan and carries flavour, helping the onions brown gently and keeping them from sticking.

The step that matters

Fry the onions until tender. Cooking onions slowly over moderate heat lets their natural sugars caramelise gradually. Rushing with high heat can scorch them before they soften, leaving bitter flavour.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper. 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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