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Stewed Steak

A stew of beef steak with onions, turnips, carrots, simmered in water or stock with ketchup, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stewed Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Cut the steak into neat pieces, ensuring it is thick and has little fat.

  2. Heat clarified dripping in a pan and fry the steak pieces for 2-3 minutes on each side until browned.

  3. Slice the onions, turnips, and carrots, then fry them in the same pan after the meat.

Stew

  1. Transfer the meat and vegetables to a stew pan with a tightly fitting lid.

  2. Add the water or stock and simmer gently for 2 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the meat to a hot dish and cover it.

  2. If the liquid is greasy, skim it, then add pepper, salt, and ketchup.

  3. Thicken the sauce if desired and pour it boiling over the steak before serving hot.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 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 steak
Lean, thick pieces become tender through long gentle simmering, while browning adds savoury flavour.
Onions
Break down during simmering, adding sweetness and body to the sauce.
Carrots
Soften during stewing, adding natural sweetness and colour to the sauce.
Turnips
Soften during stewing, adding mild sweetness and body to the sauce.
Water or stock
Forms the cooking liquid that tenderises the meat and becomes the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer gently with a tight lid. Gentle heat keeps the meat tender; a hard boil toughens muscle fibres and evaporates the liquid too quickly, and the tight lid holds in moisture so the sauce does not reduce too far.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, turnip, carrot, ketchup, pepper):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, turnip, carrot, ketchup, 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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