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Beefsteak Smothered in Onions

A steak cooked with onions and pan gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Beefsteak Smothered in Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel and slice the onions.

  2. Boil the onions in salted water for 30 minutes.

Cook the steak

  1. Heat a frying pan until hot.

  2. Cook the steak for 6 minutes on each side.

  3. Season the steak with salt and pepper.

Finish and serve

  1. Drain the onions and add them to the pan with the steak.

  2. Fry the onions for 2-3 minutes.

  3. Serve the onions on top of the steak and pour the pan gravy over them.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

White onions
Softened by boiling, then fried, they become sweet and tender, adding moisture and sweetness to the dish.
Porterhouse steak
Searing in a hot pan browns the surface and builds flavour, while the meat provides the main substance of the dish.

The step that matters

Cook the steak for 6 minutes on each side. Steak thickness and pan heat decide how cooked the centre gets. Searing in a hot pan browns the surface through the Maillard reaction, and timing that is too long dries the meat.

“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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