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Sliced Beef with Tomato Sauce

Sliced beef simmered in a tomato and mustard sauce with onion, butter, stock, Worcestershire sauce, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Sliced Beef with Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a skillet, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped onion and cook until light yellow.

  3. Gradually stir in the stewed tomato, then add the stock or gravy, Worcestershire sauce, and mustard.

  4. Season with salt and cayenne pepper.

Serve

  1. Warm the slices of beef in the sauce before serving.

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. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  2. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

Onion
Softens and adds sweetness and aroma as it cooks gently in butter.
Stewed tomato
Provides acidity, body and a rich tomato flavour to the sauce.
Stock or gravy
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries its savoury flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps cook the onion without browning it.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savoury depth and a tangy, slightly sharp note to the sauce.

The step that matters

Warm the beef in the sauce. Keeping the heat gentle stops the beef from toughening and the sauce from scorching or reducing too far. Beef held at a gentle warmth stays tender, while high heat makes muscle fibres tighten and dry out.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, tomato, sauce, 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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