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Italian Beef Steaks

A beef steak seasoned with pepper, salt, and onion, cooked slowly in a covered iron stew-pan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Italian Beef Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the steak to tenderize it.

  2. Season the steak with pepper, salt, and onion.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the steak in a covered iron stew-pan without water.

  2. Cook it by the fire for 2 to 3 hours, ensuring it does not burn.

  3. Serve the steak with its own gravy.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Steak
Is the main protein; beating it breaks up tough fibres so it cooks tender.
Onion
Adds aroma and sweetness that flavour the steak and its gravy.

The step that matters

Cooking it covered without water for 2 to 3 hours. Slow, gentle heat over a long time breaks down connective tissue and draws out the steak's own juices to form the gravy. Too much heat or a lid left off can scorch the bottom before the meat is tender, which is why the record asks you to watch that it does not burn.

“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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