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Beef Stewed with Onions

A slow‑cooked beef stew with onions, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef Stewed with Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the inside of a stewpan with good dripping.

  2. Season the steak with salt and pepper, then place it in the pan.

  3. Add the sliced onions on top of the steak.

Cook and serve

  1. Cover the saucepan tightly and simmer gently for 2 hours.

  2. Transfer the steak to a dish, place the onions on top, and pour the gravy over everything.

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 + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Steak
Provides the meat that becomes tender during slow, gentle simmering.
Spanish onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook slowly, adding body to the gravy.

The step that matters

Simmering gently with the lid on. Slow, gentle simmering breaks down the connective tissue in lean steak so it becomes tender. A hard boil toughens the meat and can dry out the liquid, so keep the heat low and the pan tightly covered.

“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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