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Beefsteak Fried with Onions

A fried steak served in a savory onion gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and onion 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 ↓

Beefsteak Fried with Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the steak

  1. Season the steak with salt and pepper, then roll it in flour.

  2. Fry the steak in hot lard until cooked through, then remove it from the pan.

Make the gravy

  1. In the same pan, add the chopped onion, more salt, pepper, and enough water to make a gravy.

  2. Cook the gravy for a short while.

  3. Return the steak to the pan.

  4. Let the steak sit in the gravy for a few minutes before serving 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. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Steak
Is the main protein, browned by frying and tenderised by resting in the gravy.
Flour
Coats the steak so it browns in the hot lard and helps thicken the gravy.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury flavour as it cooks into the gravy.
Hot lard
Conducts heat for frying, browning the flour coating and adding richness.

The step that matters

Frying the floured steak in hot lard. The fat must be hot enough to brown the flour coating quickly; if the pan is too cool, the coating absorbs fat and turns greasy and pale before the steak cooks through.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour. 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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