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Braised Beef

A braised beef dish with pork fat, onion, steak, flour, salt, pepper, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Braised Beef

Why it works: Pork and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,214 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Braised Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the meat

  1. Fry the pork until crispy.

  2. Add sliced onion and fry until golden brown.

  3. Remove the onion from the pan.

  4. Cut the steak into 1.5‑inch squares and brown on all sides.

  5. Season with salt and pepper.

  6. Sprinkle flour over the meat and stir well.

Braise

  1. Pour boiling water over the meat to cover and cook slowly for about 3 hours until tender.

  2. Add more water if it boils away too quickly.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 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
Becomes tender during long, slow cooking in liquid as its connective tissue breaks down.
Flour
Coats the browned meat and thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy.
Fat pork
Renders fat into the pan that browns the meat and adds savory flavor.
Onion
Browns in the rendered fat, adding sweetness and aroma to the braising liquid.

The step that matters

Keep the meat covered and simmering slowly. If the water boils away and the meat is exposed, it dries and toughens. Slow, gentle simmering lets tough collagen convert to gelatin, so the beef turns tender rather than stringy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, 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.

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