Skip to main content
Main

Spanish Steak

A stew of seasoned steak simmered with tomatoes, onions, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Spanish Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove bones and trim the steak, using bones for stock.

  2. Sprinkle meat with salt, pepper, and flour, pounding it in with the edge of a saucer.

  3. Cut the steak into pieces for serving.

Brown and simmer

  1. Fry sliced onions in 2 tablespoons of drippings in an iron skillet until brown, then remove from skillet.

  2. Add the remaining 2 tablespoons of drippings and fry the meat on both sides until brown.

  3. Add boiling water to cover the meat, cover tightly, and simmer for about 2 hours, replenishing water and turning as necessary.

  4. At the end of 2 hours, add tomatoes, onions, paprika, and cayenne, and cook until the meat is very tender and the sauce is dark brown.

  5. Serve the meat in the sauce.

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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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
Forms the main body of the stew and becomes tender during long, slow simmering.
Flour
Coats the meat and thickens the sauce as it browns and cooks.
Canned tomatoes
Add acidity and liquid that help build the sauce's flavor and body.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth as they brown and dissolve into the sauce.
Drippings
Provide fat for browning the onions and meat, adding rich flavor.

The step that matters

Browning the meat in drippings. Frying the meat until well browned creates deep flavor through the Maillard reaction. Pale meat gives a flatter, less rich sauce, and the flour coating also needs to brown for good color.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Eggplantfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, flour. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes