Skip to main content
Main

Steak Dressing

A simple sauce made by adding flour to pan fat, simmering with water, and seasoning with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Steak Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Add a little butter or frying fat if there's not enough fat in the pan after removing the steak.

  2. Add flour equal to the amount of fat in the pan.

  3. Set over high heat and stir until smooth and browned.

  4. Add 1 cup of cold water for every 2 tablespoons of flour, and stir.

  5. Boil for 2 minutes.

  6. Season with salt and pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve with the meat.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Flour
Thickens the pan drippings into a smooth sauce as it cooks with the fat.
Butter or frying fat
Carries the flour and browns in the pan, adding richness to the sauce.
Cold water
Dilutes the roux and, once boiled, loosens it into a pourable sauce.

The step that matters

Stir until smooth before adding water. Flour that is not cooked and blended into the fat can form lumps. Stirring it smooth and browning it gives an even base, and adding the cold water gradually helps prevent lumps when the liquid is added.

“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.

More steak sauce recipes

Rump 4 See all 12 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes