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Stewed Steak

A beef stew with onions, turnips, carrots, and ketchup, simmered for two hours.

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

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

  2. Pare and slice the onions, turnips, and carrots.

Brown the meat and vegetables

  1. Heat clarified dripping in a pan.

  2. Fry the steak pieces for 2–3 minutes on each side until browned.

  3. Fry the sliced vegetables in the same pan after the meat.

  4. Transfer the browned meat and fried vegetables to a stew pan with a tightly fitting lid.

Stew and serve

  1. Add the water or stock to the stew pan.

  2. Simmer gently for 2 hours.

  3. Remove the meat to a hot dish.

  4. Cover the dish.

  5. If the liquid is greasy, skim it off.

  6. Add pepper, salt, and ketchup to the liquid.

  7. Thicken the sauce if desired.

  8. Pour the thickened sauce 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
Browning and long simmering turn the lean meat tender and savory in the stew.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, adding body and flavor to the sauce.
Carrots
Release natural sugars during simmering, adding sweetness and body to the sauce.
Turnips
Soften during simmering and add mild sweetness and body to the sauce.
Water or stock
Provides the liquid that gently cooks the meat and vegetables into a sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 2 hours. A gentle simmer breaks down the connective tissue in the beef slowly, making it tender. A hard boil toughens muscle fibers and evaporates liquid too fast, leaving the meat dry and chewy.

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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