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A Very Good Way to Fry Beef-Steaks

A method for frying beef steaks with butter, walnut ketchup, caper liquor, and a thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and walnut 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 the steaks

  1. Cut the steaks as for broiling.

Make the gravy

  1. In a frying pan, melt ½ cup of butter over low heat.

  2. Turn the steaks until the butter becomes a thick white gravy.

  3. Pour the gravy into a bowl.

  4. Add more butter to the pan.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the steaks until almost done.

  2. Pour the gravy back into the pan.

  3. Fry the steaks until they are light brown over medium-high heat.

  4. Remove the steaks.

  5. Place them in a hot serving dish.

  6. Slice a shallot.

  7. Add the shallot to the gravy.

  8. Pour it hot 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. Shallot + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together440 recipes

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

  2. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Provide the meat that is browned in the pan and served with the gravy.
Butter
Melts into the pan to fry the steaks and, with browning, forms the thick white gravy.
Shallot
Adds a mild aromatic onion flavor to the gravy poured over the steaks.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into the gravy.

The step that matters

Turning the steaks until the butter becomes a thick white gravy. Butter that is heated too fast or too long can brown or burn before it thickens. Low heat lets the butter emulsify with its milk solids into a smooth, thick gravy.

Swap the walnut

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

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

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

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