Skip to main content
Main

Warmed-over Beef

A quick sauce of drippings, flour, tomatoes, stock, and seasonings served over chopped rare beef.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Warmed-over Beef

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the drippings in a pan.

  2. Add the flour and stir until combined.

  3. Gradually pour in the tomatoes and stock or water, stirring continuously.

  4. Season with salt, paprika, and onion juice.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the chopped beef and cook for 1 minute.

  2. Serve immediately.

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 + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Drippings
Provides fat for cooking the flour and carries the meat flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the fat and liquid.
Tomatoes
Add acidity, body and colour to the sauce.
Beef
Supplies the main protein and savoury flavour, warmed briefly in the sauce.

The step that matters

Add the chopped beef and cook for 1 minute. The beef is already cooked and rare, so it only needs brief heating. Longer cooking toughens meat proteins and dries it out, while the sauce must be hot enough to warm it through.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, onion, beef. 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 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipes