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Fried Round Steak

A pan‑fried round steak served with a butter‑flour sauce over fresh watercress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 340 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Round Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the steak

  1. Trim the outer edges of fat from the round steak.

  2. Cut a piece large enough for a meal and pound it with a hammer until tender.

Fry and serve

  1. Shape the steak and fry it in a hot skillet for 1 minute on each side until browned.

  2. Place the cooked steak on a bed of fresh watercress.

  3. In the skillet, add butter and let it cool slightly.

  4. Stir in flour, salt, and pepper.

  5. Pour in boiling water.

  6. Cook for 1 minute and pour the sauce over the steak.

  7. Serve immediately.

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. Flour + watercresstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together340 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + watercresstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together983 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. 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

Round steak
Is the main protein; pounding it breaks down fibers so it becomes tender.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the pan sauce and carries flavor.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the pan juices into a light sauce as it cooks with the liquid.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling water to the pan. Pouring in boiling water into a flour-thickened butter mixture helps it blend smoothly and thicken quickly. Adding cold or lukewarm liquid can cause lumps, and the sauce is cooked only briefly, so it needs to come together fast.

“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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