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Favourite Steak Stew

A stew of tender steak pieces simmered in water with optional onion, sauce, butter, thickener, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Favourite Steak Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Simmer

  1. In a pot, cover the steak pieces with water.

  2. Simmer slowly for 2½ hours.

  3. If desired, add the finely sliced onion.

Finish and serve

  1. A little before serving, stir in the sauce, butter, thickening, pepper, and salt.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Steak
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during the long, slow simmer.
Thickening
Starch swells when heated in the liquid, thickening the stew into a sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Onion
Softens and turns mildly sweet during simmering, adding flavor to the stew.

The step that matters

Adding the thickening. Starch thickeners such as flour or cornstarch need to be stirred in smoothly and heated so the starch swells and thickens the liquid. Stirring in dry thickener without enough heat can leave lumps or a thin sauce.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, butter, flour, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, butter, flour, 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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