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Beef Kabobs

Skewered pieces of steak seasoned with ginger, onion, garlic, cloves, curry powder, and salt, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Beef Kabobs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut the rump steak into thin pieces, about 2 inches wide and 6 inches long.

  2. Rub each piece with the juice of green ginger.

  3. In a bowl, mix the chopped onion, garlic, pounded cloves, curry powder, and salt.

  4. Spread some of the mixture on each piece of meat, roll them up, and secure with skewers.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry the skewers in butter for about 10 minutes.

  2. Remove the skewers and serve with a gravy or thin brown sauce, adding a few drops of lemon juice.

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. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Ginger + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Ginger + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 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 steak
Forms the main body of the kabobs and provides the meat that is cooked and eaten.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma and flavour to the spiced filling wrapped inside the beef.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice blend that flavours the filling.
Butter
Conducts heat in the frying pan and promotes browning on the outside of the skewers.

The step that matters

Fry the skewers in butter for about 10 minutes. Frying over steady heat browns the outside of the rolled beef while keeping the inside tender. Overcooking toughens rump steak, so the cook should watch the time closely.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ginger, onion, garlic, clove, butter):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, onion, garlic, clove, 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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