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Swiss Steak

A tender steak cooked slowly with onion in a broth of water and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 32,460 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Swiss Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Salt the steak and beat the flour well into it.

  2. Brown quickly on both sides in hot fat.

Steam

  1. Add water, cover tightly, and steam until very tender.

  2. Add more water if necessary.

  3. When about half done, add chopped onion.

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 + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Round steak
Tough connective tissue softens into tenderness during long, moist cooking, giving the meat its texture.
Flour
Coats the steak so it browns evenly and thickens the cooking liquid slightly.
Onion
Sweetens and adds aroma to the cooking liquid as it softens.
Hot fat
Browns the surface of the steak quickly, adding color and savory flavor.

The step that matters

Steaming until very tender. Tough meat needs a long time in covered, moist heat for its connective tissue to break down. If the liquid runs low, the steak can dry out and stay tough, so the added water matters.

“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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