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Smothered Steak

Smothered steak is a dish of steak cooked with onions in a gravy made from water, cornstarch, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Smothered Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dish

  1. Slice the onions and place a layer in a skillet.

  2. Add the steak on top, then another layer of onions and a few dashes of pepper.

  3. Cover closely and monitor; add more hot water if it boils away.

  4. Cook until the onions are tender and the meat is cooked through.

  5. Transfer to a hot platter.

Finish the gravy

  1. Mix the cornstarch with a little cold water until smooth.

  2. Stir in the salt and add to the gravy, then pour over the steak.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Steak
Forms the main protein, cooking through slowly in the covered skillet with the onions.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, releasing moisture that helps form the gravy.
Cornstarch
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth gravy when mixed with cold water first.

The step that matters

Add the cornstarch slurry smoothly. Cornstarch must be mixed with cold water before adding to hot liquid, otherwise it clumps. Starch granules swell and thicken the gravy only once heated, so a smooth slurry gives an even texture.

“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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