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Onions, with Beef Steak, Etc

A beef steak cooked with sliced onions in a butter and walnut ketchup gravy.

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 ↓

Onions, with Beef Steak, Etc

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove a thin piece off each end of the onions and peel off the outer skins.

  2. Cut the onions into slices about ¼ inch thick.

Cook

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan, then add the steak pieces and brown them.

  2. Season with pepper and salt, then add the sliced onions and 3 ounces of butter.

  3. Cover the saucepan and simmer gently until done, about 1.5 hours.

Serve

  1. Arrange the steak on a hot dish.

  2. Boil the onion gravy with walnut ketchup.

  3. Pour it over the meat.

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. Pepper + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Onion + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,771 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Spanish onions
Soften slowly in butter and release sweetness, forming the body of the gravy.
Steak
Provides the main protein; browning it first builds savoury flavour in the pan.
Butter
Carries heat evenly for browning and adds richness to the onions and gravy.
Walnut ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, tangy depth to the onion gravy.

The step that matters

Simmer gently with the lid on. Low, covered heat cooks the steak through and softens the onions without scorching them. Rapid boiling would toughen the meat and burn the butter and sugars in the onions.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Beansfits about as well
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Sesamefits about as well
  4. Chestnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, pepper, ketchup. 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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