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Beef Steak with Tomatoes

A beef steak served with stewed tomatoes seasoned with butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef Steak with Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato sauce

  1. Mash the peeled tomatoes and season with butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. Stew the mixture thick without burning.

Cook and serve

  1. Broil the beef steak in the usual manner.

  2. Serve the stewed tomatoes around the broiled beef steak.

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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Butter + beeftop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Break down into a thick stewed sauce that adds moisture and acidity to the steak.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavour to the mashed tomatoes.
Beef steak
Main protein; broiling browns its surface and gives savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Stewing the tomatoes thick without burning. Tomatoes contain sugars that scorch over high heat, and slow stewing lets water evaporate so the mixture thickens without tasting bitter or burnt.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Onionfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, beef. 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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