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Stewed Beef Steaks

A dish of beef steaks stewed in a flavored broth and finished by frying in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Stewed Beef Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Stew

  1. In a pot, combine water, sweet herbs, mace, onion, anchovy, and butter soaked in flour.

  2. Cover and stew the steaks in this mixture until tender but not overcooked.

Brown and serve

  1. In a frying pan, heat enough fresh butter to cover the steaks and fry them until browned.

  2. Pour off excess fat and add the stewing gravy to the pan.

  3. Heat the gravy until rich and consistent, then place the steaks on a hot dish and pour the sauce over them.

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. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Anchovy + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Clove + sherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,237 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter soaked in flour
Flour-thickened butter that gives the stewing liquid body and a rich, smooth gravy.
Anchovy
Adds savory depth to the gravy without tasting distinctly fishy.
Sherry or madeira
Adds acidity and sweetness that round out the flavor of the gravy.
Onion
Contributes savory sweetness and aroma to the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Stew until tender but not overcooked. Long, gentle simmering breaks down the connective tissue in beef, but overcooking toughens the muscle fibers and dries the meat, so the steaks should be checked for tenderness before they go too far.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, clove, anchovy, butter, flour, sherry):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, clove, anchovy, butter, flour, sherry. 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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