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Beef Skibt Steak

A beef skirt steak cooked slowly in water with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef Skibt Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the beef skirt with salt, pepper, and dredge with flour.

  2. Place the beef in an earthen dish and add enough water to partly cover it.

Cook

  1. Mix 1 teaspoon of butter with 1 teaspoon of flour and add to the water.

  2. Cook for 2 hours in an Aladdin Pail.

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 + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 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. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Beef skirt
Is the main protein that becomes tender and flavorful during the long, moist cooking.
Flour
Dredging coats the beef, and the flour and butter mixture thickens the cooking liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the cooking liquid, carrying flavor into the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook for 2 hours in an Aladdin Pail. Skirt steak is a tough cut with lots of connective tissue. A long, gentle, moist cook is what breaks it down; too much heat or too short a time leaves it chewy. Keep the liquid partly covering the meat throughout.

“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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