Name: Steak and Onions
Ingredients: 1 thick steak; butter; onions

Why it works: Butter and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,912 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Steak and Onions

Ingredients

1 thick steak
butter
onions

Directions

Prepare

Butter both sides of the steak.
Slice the onions thinly and layer them on top of the steak.
Place the steak in a shallow cooking vessel.

Cook

Put the vessel in the cooker using both radiators.
Cook for about 45 minutes.

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.

Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together42,912 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Steak: Forms the main body of the dish, and its thickness helps it stay juicy during a long cook.
Butter: Adds fat that carries flavor and helps the steak's surface brown.
Onions: Soften and turn sweet as they cook, adding aroma and moisture.

“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.