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Rump Steak Stewed

A stew of rump steak with gravy, stock, port wine, mushrooms, brown sauce, horseradish, salt, cayenne, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Port wine and mushroom work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 570 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Rump Steak Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the steak

  1. Fry the steak over a brisk fire until browned.

  2. Place the steak in a stewpan with gravy, stock, port wine, and chopped mushrooms.

  3. Stew gently until the steak is tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Add good brown sauce and shake gently to combine.

  2. Dish the steak and top with scraped or grated horseradish.

  3. Season with coarse sea salt, cayenne pepper, and sugar to taste.

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. Port wine + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together570 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Horseradish + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Sauce + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together775 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 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

Rump steak
Provides the meat that becomes tender through slow stewing in liquid.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth to the braising liquid as it reduces.
Chopped mushrooms
Contribute savoury, earthy flavour and moisture to the stew.
Good brown sauce
Adds richness and body to the gravy and deepens its colour.
Scraped or grated horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent heat that cuts through the richness of the stew.

The step that matters

Stew gently until the steak is tender. Rump is a tougher cut, and it becomes tender only with long, low, moist heat that slowly breaks down connective tissue. Boiling vigorously toughens the meat and dries the surface, so a gentle simmer is needed.

Swap the horseradish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (port wine, mushroom, sauce, pepper, sugar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against port wine, mushroom, sauce, pepper, sugar. 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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