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Braised Steak a LA Lotta

A braised beef steak cooked slowly with onion, carrot, spices, and a savory gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Braised Steak a LA Lotta

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Lightly fry the beef steak in a little dripping.

  2. Fry the chopped onion with the steak.

  3. Drain the steak and onion from the fat and place in a baking dish.

  4. Add water, grated carrot, pepper, salt, cloves, Yorkshire relish, vinegar, and sugar.

  5. Stew slowly for about 1.5 hours until tender.

  6. Thicken the gravy with browned flour or rice when it begins to simmer.

  7. Add browning sauce if desired.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef steak
Provides the meat that becomes tender during slow stewing.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy as it simmers, giving it body.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it softens in the fat.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the gravy and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Stew slowly until tender. Collagen in lean steak breaks down only with long, gentle moist heat. Boiling hard toughens the muscle fibres, so keep the gravy at a low simmer for the full time.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, pepper, clove, vinegar, sugar, flour):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, pepper, clove, vinegar, sugar, flour. 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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