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Spanish Steak

A steak served with a tomato and green pepper sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Spanish Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a pan, fry the chopped onion until brown.

  2. Add the chopped tomatoes and sliced green peppers, and stew until thickened.

Cook and serve the steak

  1. In another pan, fry the steak to your liking.

  2. Place the steak on a hot platter.

  3. Pour the sauce from the first pan into the frying pan and heat for 2 minutes.

  4. Pour the sauce over the steak and 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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Onion
Browning in the pan builds a sweet, savoury base for the sauce.
Tomatoes
Break down while stewing to form the body and acidity of the sauce.
Green peppers
Soften as they stew, adding fresh, slightly bitter flavour and texture to the sauce.
Steak
Provides the main protein; searing in a hot pan browns its surface for flavour.

The step that matters

Stewing the tomato and pepper sauce until thickened. Tomatoes and peppers release water as they cook. Stewing long enough lets that moisture evaporate so the sauce thickens and clings to the steak instead of running off it.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Eggplantfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper. 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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