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Curried Steak

A steak dish simmered in butter, onion, stock, lemon, vinegar, and curry powder, served with boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,433 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Curried Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the steak

  1. Grill the steak until nearly done, then remove from heat and cut into good-sized pieces.

Make the curry

  1. In a frying pan, melt the butter and fry the finely sliced onion until cooked.

  2. Add the meat to the pan and fry lightly for a few minutes.

  3. Stir in the stock and lemon juice, then thicken with the flour.

  4. Add the curry powder and simmer for 20 minutes.

  5. Just before serving, add the vinegar.

Serve

  1. Serve with a border of carefully boiled rice, rinsed with cold water to separate the grains.

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 + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour 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

Steak
Provides the main protein and meaty bulk of the dish.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it cooks, building the base flavour of the sauce.
Butter
Carries the spices and adds richness to the frying base.
Flour
Thickens the stock and lemon liquid into a body-rich sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the dominant spiced aroma and flavour of the dish.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, spiced sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the flour to the liquid. Flour clumps if stirred into hot liquid all at once. Blending it smoothly into the stock first, or whisking as it is added, gives an even, lump-free thickening of the sauce.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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