Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Beefsteaks

A stew of beefsteaks cooked with butter, wine, shallot, onion, walnut ketchup, pepper, salt, and thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Shallot and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 440 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Stewed Beefsteaks

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the steak

  1. Place the steak and ½ cup butter in a stew pan over low heat.

  2. Turn the steak until the butter forms a white gravy, then pour it into a bowl.

  3. Add more butter to the steak and cook until done.

  4. Return the gravy to the stew pan, fry the steak, then add it back to the gravy.

Stew and serve

  1. Stir in 1 tablespoon wine and the sliced shallot, and stew for 10 minutes.

  2. Alternatively, fry the steak slightly, then add it to ½ pint water, sliced onion, walnut ketchup, pepper, and salt.

  3. Cover and thicken with flour and butter, then serve hot.

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. Shallot + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together440 recipes

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

  2. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Shallot + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,431 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 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

Butter
Browns the steak and forms the white gravy that enriches the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a body-rich sauce when cooked with butter.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the savoury stewed sauce.
Walnut ketchup
Contributes a deep, savoury, umami flavour to the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Returning the steak to the gravy and stewing. Frying the steak briefly before it rejoins the gravy seals in juices and browns the surface. Overcooking during the stew toughens the protein, so the steak can turn dry and chewy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, wine, shallot, walnut, ketchup, pepper, flour. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes