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Beef Steak with Macaroni

A dish of beef steak served with macaroni, onions, and ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion 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 ↓

Beef Steak with Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the beef steak with a rolling pin.

  2. Fry the sliced onion in dripping until nicely browned.

  3. Boil the macaroni in salted water for 10 minutes.

  4. Soak the brown bread crust in hot water for 10 minutes, then pour the water over the onion and keep warm.

Cook and serve

  1. Sprinkle the steak with salt, pepper, and flour, then fry in a hot pan for 5 minutes on each side.

  2. Remove the steak, pour the onion into the pan, heat it, and add ketchup.

  3. Serve the onion over the steak and arrange the macaroni around it.

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

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

  2. Beef + peppertop 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. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef steak
Forms the main protein; frying in a hot pan browns its surface and adds savoury flavour.
Onion
Browning in dripping builds sweet, savoury flavour that forms the base of the sauce.
Macaroni
Provides starch that makes the plate filling and absorbs the flavours of the dish.
Brown bread crust
Soaked in hot water, it adds body and a toasty, roasted flavour to the onion liquid.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity to the onion mixture, rounding out its flavour.

The step that matters

Frying the steak in a hot pan. A very hot pan browns the surface quickly through the Maillard reaction, creating flavour. If the pan is not hot enough, the steak steams, turns grey and tastes flat.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Turnipfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, pepper, flour, ketchup. 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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