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Smothered Round Steak

A tender steak simmered in lard and butter with flour, salt, pepper, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Smothered Round Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat lard in a skillet.

  2. Add butter and let it melt.

  3. Roll the pieces of steak in seasoned flour.

  4. Quickly dust off excess flour from both sides.

Cook

  1. Pour a little water over the steak.

  2. Simmer gently for 30 minutes or until tender.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Walnut + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Flour
Coats the steak so it browns and thickens the pan juices into a gravy.
Lard
Fat for frying the steak, adding richness and helping it brown.
Butter
Adds flavour and richness to the frying fat.

The step that matters

Dust off excess flour quickly. Flour that stays thick on the surface can clump or burn in the hot fat and taste raw or bitter. A light, even coating browns well and thickens the juices smoothly.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits better
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper. 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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