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Beefsteak En Casserole

A casserole of beefsteak with carrots, turnips, onions, and sauce, baked slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Beefsteak En Casserole

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Heat an iron frying pan and rub it with a bit of fat from the meat.

  2. Cook the steak on one side, then the other, to seal in the juices.

  3. Transfer the steak to a casserole dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Add the carrots, turnips, onions, sauce, and stock or water.

  2. Cover and cook gently in the oven at 300°F (150°C) for 1.5 hours.

  3. After 1 hour, add salt and more broth if needed.

  4. Serve directly from the casserole.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Onion + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Turnip + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Onion and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,474 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

Round steak
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during slow, covered cooking.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the stew as they soften in the liquid.
Turnips
Add mild earthy flavor and substance as they cook through in the liquid.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth as they soften and flavor the stock.
Brown stock
Supplies the cooking liquid that moistens the meat and vegetables and carries flavor.

The step that matters

Searing the steak on both sides. Browning the meat creates rich, savory flavors through the Maillard reaction. Pan-searing before braising builds flavor in the surface, and the record says it seals in the juices.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, sauce):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, sauce. 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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