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Bref Steak and Onions

A steak served with sautéed onions, seasoned with salt, pepper, flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper 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 ↓

Bref Steak and Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel the onions and boil them for about 30 minutes.

  2. Drain the onions in a colander, then cut them up.

Make the onion gravy

  1. In a frying pan, combine the onions with salt, pepper, and flour.

  2. Add the butter and stir well.

  3. Cook over medium heat, stirring often, until the onions are soft and slightly browned.

Serve

  1. Return the cooked steak to the pan and heat everything together.

  2. Serve the steak on a dish, pouring the onions and gravy over it while 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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, forming the bulk of the gravy-like topping.
Flour
Thickens the butter and onion juices into a gravy that coats the steak.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the onions brown and carrying flavour.

The step that matters

Cooking the onions until soft and slightly browned. Cooking over medium heat while stirring often lets moisture evaporate and sugars brown gently. Too high a heat scorches the flour and onions before they soften, leaving a bitter taste.

Swap the onion

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

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

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