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Steak Smothered with Onions

A steak smothered in onions, tomatoes, and water, baked after sautéing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,633 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Steak Smothered with Onions

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Fry the onions

  1. Fry the onions in lard until golden, then remove from the pan.

Sear the steak

  1. In the same pan, fry the rump steak in butter for 2 minutes on each side.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer the steak to a baking dish, season with salt, and top with the fried onions and tomatoes.

  2. Add water to the dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 20 minutes.

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. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  2. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Soften and turn sweet as they fry, then cover the steak with a savory layer.
Rump steak
Provides the main meat, browned on the outside while staying juicy inside.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor and helps brown the steak's surface during frying.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and gentle acidity that blends with the onions during baking.

The step that matters

Fry the steak for 2 minutes per side in butter. Searing over sustained heat browns the surface through the Maillard reaction, building flavor. Too little time leaves the surface pale, and too much dries the meat before it finishes baking.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter. 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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