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Beef Rump-steaks Stewed

A stew of beef rump steaks simmered with button onions, butter, and a sauce made from the cooking liquid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Beef Rump-steaks Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Braise the steaks

  1. Melt 1 ounce of butter in a stewpan with 2 onions.

  2. Add the rump steaks and cook over low heat for 5 minutes on each side.

  3. Boil 1 pint of button onions for 30 to 60 minutes.

  4. Add the cooking liquid from the button onions to the steaks, adding broth or boiling water if needed to cover.

  5. Add 12 whole black peppercorns and coarse sea salt to taste, then simmer gently for about 1.5 hours.

  6. Strain off about 1.5 pints of the liquid for the sauce.

Make the sauce

  1. In a clean stewpan, melt 2 ounces of butter and stir in enough flour to make a stiff paste.

  2. Optionally, add 1 tablespoon of claret or Port wine, 1 tablespoon of mushroom ketchup, ¼ teaspoon of ground black pepper, and gradually add the strained liquid.

  3. Bring to a boil for 15 minutes, skim, and strain the sauce.

Serve

  1. Serve the steaks with the boiled onions around the dish and pour the gravy over.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Port wine + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together570 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. 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

Rump steaks
Long gentle simmering in liquid turns the tough muscle tender and moist.
Butter
Melted fat carries flavour and gives the sauce a rich, smooth body.
Flour
Cooked with butter into a paste, it thickens the strained liquid into a gravy.
Button onions
Simmered until soft, they add sweetness and a mild, mellow onion flavour.

The step that matters

Making the flour and butter paste. Flour must be cooked in melted butter until smooth and free of lumps before liquid is added. Stirring it in cold or unevenly leaves lumps, and the thickening starch only swells properly once it is fully dispersed in the fat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sauce, flour, port wine, mushroom, ketchup, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce, flour, port wine, mushroom, ketchup, 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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