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French Beefsteak

A thick beefsteak cooked with suet, onions, potatoes, and thickened in a stew.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

French Beefsteak

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare and cook the beef

  1. Dust the beef slices with flour and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

  2. Place the beef in a 400°F (200°C) oven with shredded suet and fry for five hours.

  3. After frying, add enough water to cover the meat and let it stew until dinner.

Add vegetables and finish

  1. About 45 minutes before serving, add small silver onions and large potatoes. Cook until done.

  2. Ten minutes before serving, add thickening.

  3. Season with salt and black pepper.

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 + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 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

Beef
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow cooking in liquid.
Shredded suet
Adds fat that renders during frying, enriching the flavor and moistening the meat.
Flour
Dusted on the beef, it helps the surface brown and gives the stew body.
Potatoes
Absorb cooking liquid and soften, adding starch and body to the stew.
Small silver onions
Soften during stewing, adding sweetness and savory depth to the liquid.
Thickening
Starch that swells when heated, thickening the cooking liquid into a gravy.

The step that matters

Add thickening ten minutes before serving. Starch thickens when heated and must cook briefly to lose its raw taste and reach full thickness. Adding it too early can break down with long cooking, while adding it too late leaves the gravy thin and floury.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, potato, 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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