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Beefsteak and Onion

A steak cooked to preference and topped with buttered sliced Bermuda onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and onion 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 and Onion

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the steak

  1. Broil the steak until cooked to your liking and place it on a hot dish.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

Make the buttered onions

  1. Simmer the sliced Bermuda onion in butter for 10 minutes without browning.

  2. Strain the onion and pour the butter over the steak.

Rest and serve

  1. Cover with a hot tin platter for 5 minutes.

  2. Make cuts in the steak to allow the juices to flow and the butter to penetrate.

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. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Steak
Provides the main protein, which browns under the broiler and is served as the centrepiece.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and carries flavour into the steak once poured over it.
Bermuda onion
Becomes sweet and mellow when simmered gently in butter without browning.

The step that matters

Simmering the onion without browning. Gentle heat softens the onion and draws out its sweetness. Higher heat would brown the sugars and change the flavour and colour of the butter.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, 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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