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Beefsteak Smothered with Onions

Beefsteak topped with onions and served with a milk‑flour‑Worcestershire sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Beefsteak Smothered with Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the steak

  1. Broil the steak and place it on a hot platter.

  2. Cover the steak with smothered onions.

Make the beef cakes

  1. Chop 2 pounds of lean beef from the shoulder finely.

  2. Soak 1 pound of bread crumbs in milk until soft.

  3. Mix the soaked bread crumbs with the chopped beef.

  4. Form the mixture into cakes with your hands.

  5. Roll the cakes in flour.

  6. Fry the cakes in a little hot butter in a skillet for about 10 minutes.

  7. Remove the cakes from the skillet but keep them hot.

Make the sauce and bake

  1. In the same pan, rub in 2 tablespoons of flour.

  2. Add 1 quart of milk and 1 tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce, and let it boil for a few minutes.

  3. Pour this sauce over the meat and bake until brown.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Lean beef (in the method)
Provides the main meaty body of the cakes.
Bread crumbs
Soak up milk and bind with the beef to keep the cakes moist and tender.
Milk
Softens the bread crumbs and, with flour, thickens the sauce.
Flour
Coats the cakes for browning and thickens the sauce as a roux.
Butter
Fries the cakes, adding fat for browning and rich flavour.

The step that matters

Rubbing in the flour for the sauce. Flour must be cooked briefly in the fat before liquid is added; otherwise the sauce can taste raw and form lumps. Adding milk gradually and boiling it keeps the sauce smooth and thickened.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, 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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