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German Onion Beef

A slow‑cooked flank beef stew flavored with cloves, peppercorns, bay leaf, lemon rind, and onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

German Onion Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beef

  1. Place the flank beef in a stewpan and cover with water.

  2. Add salt and the muslin bag with cloves, peppercorns, bay leaf, and lemon rind.

  3. Simmer gently for 40 minutes.

Add the onions and thicken

  1. Add sliced onions and simmer until tender, skimming off any scum.

  2. Remove the muslin bag and thicken the gravy with flour mixed with cold water.

Serve

  1. Serve the meat and onions in a hot dish.

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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  2. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Clove + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Clove + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,671 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 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

Flank beef
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Onions
Sweeten as they cook slowly and form the soft body of the dish.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth gravy when mixed with cold water first.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy with flour and cold water. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps, because its starch granules swell on contact and stick together. Mixing it first with cold water separates the granules so they disperse evenly and thicken the gravy smoothly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, clove, onion, 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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