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Beefsteak Smothered with Onions

A beef steak simmered in a sauce of onions, butter, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Beefsteak Smothered with Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Make the onion sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the chopped onions, hot water, butter, pepper, and salt.

  2. Dredge in a little flour and let it stew until the onions are soft.

Cook and serve

  1. Broil the steak as desired.

  2. Add the steak to the saucepan with the onions and let it simmer for about 10 minutes.

  3. Serve very 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 + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour 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 into a sweet, savory base that forms the body of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and gives the sauce a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid as the onions stew, giving the sauce body.
Beef steak
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender and flavorful as it simmers in the onion sauce.

The step that matters

Dredging the onions in flour before stewing. Flour must be stirred in so it coats the onions and hydrates in the liquid; if added in a clump or left raw, it forms lumps and leaves a pasty taste, while stirring it through gives a smooth, thickened sauce.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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

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