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Smothered Steak

Smothered steak is a round steak cooked with onion, water, salt, pepper, flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Smothered Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Braise the steak

  1. Brown the round steak in a hot pan.

  2. Add the chopped onion and enough water to cover the steak.

  3. Simmer gently for 1 hour on low heat.

  4. Season with salt and black pepper.

  5. Dredge the steak with flour halfway through cooking.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a separate pan, melt the butter.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook until golden.

  3. Add the cooking liquid from the steak to the sauce.

  4. Pour the sauce around the steak and serve hot.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  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).

Flour and butter 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
Forms the main body of the dish; long gentle simmering makes it tender.
Flour
Dredged on the steak and cooked in butter to thicken the sauce.
Butter
Fat that is melted and cooked with flour to form the base of the sauce.
Onion
Softens during simmering and adds savory sweetness to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour and cook until golden. Cooking flour in melted butter before adding liquid lets its starch coat the fat, so the sauce thickens smoothly without lumps and loses its raw flour taste.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, butter. 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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