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Beefsteak and Onions

A slow‑cooked beefsteak and onion stew thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 32,460 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Beefsteak and Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the beefsteak into pieces ready to serve.

  2. Place the beefsteak in a skillet with a little hot water.

  3. Slice the onions and add them to the skillet.

Stew and make the gravy

  1. Stew slowly for several hours until the water evaporates and the meat browns.

  2. Stir flour into the fat rendered from the meat.

  3. If there's too much fat, remove some and add boiling water, stirring until the flour is cooked.

Serve

  1. Pour the meat and gravy into a deep dish or platter and serve.

  2. If desired, substitute bay leaves for onions, removing them before serving.

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 + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 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

Thick beefsteak
Forms the main body of the stew and browns as the water evaporates.
Onions
Soften during the long stew and add sweetness to the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the rendered meat fat into a gravy.

The step that matters

Stewing slowly until the water evaporates. Slow cooking gives the meat time to tenderise, while the water must evaporate before the surface can brown. Cooking too fast or with too much liquid leaves the meat grey and boiled rather than browned.

“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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