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Beef, Cold Steaks to Warm

A method for warming cold beef steaks with onion, spices, and a flour‑butter gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Beef, Cold Steaks to Warm

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the cold steaks in a stewpan with the quartered onion, allspice, and black peppercorns.

Simmer

  1. Cover the steaks with boiling water and let them simmer gently for one hour.

Thicken the gravy

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour and butter together until smooth.

  2. Add the flour and butter mixture to the stewpan if there is about 1 pint of gravy.

  3. Shake the stewpan well over the heat for five minutes until thickened.

Serve

  1. Serve the steaks and onions on a dish, pouring the gravy through a sieve over them.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Allspice + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks with the butter and liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the flour blend smoothly into the gravy.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma to the simmering liquid.

The step that matters

Shaking the flour and butter into the gravy. Adding flour and butter to hot liquid without thorough mixing can leave lumps. Shaking the stewpan over heat disperses the starch so it thickens evenly.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, flour, butter. 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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