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Stewed Beefsteaks

A dish of beefsteaks simmered with butter, wine, shallot, onion, walnut ketchup, pepper, salt, and thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 440 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Stewed Beefsteaks

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Place the steak and 2 tablespoons of butter in a stew pan over low heat.

  2. Turn the steak until the butter forms a white gravy.

  3. Pour the gravy into a bowl.

  4. Add more butter to the steak.

  5. Cook the steak until done.

Stew and serve

  1. Return the gravy to the pan.

  2. Fry the steak.

  3. Add the steak back to the gravy.

  4. Stir in 1 tablespoon of wine and the sliced shallot.

  5. Stew for 10 minutes.

  6. Alternatively, fry the steak slightly.

  7. Add the steak to ½ pint of water, sliced onion, walnut ketchup, pepper, and salt.

  8. Cover and simmer.

  9. Thicken with flour and butter before serving hot.

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. Shallot + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Shallot + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Steak
Is the main protein, cooked slowly in its own butter and gravy until tender.
Butter
Browns the steak and forms the white gravy that later becomes the sauce base.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.
Walnut ketchup
Adds a deep, savoury, umami flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken with flour and butter before serving. Flour must be cooked into the butter and hot liquid so starch swells and thickens the sauce evenly; added raw or in clumps it stays floury and lumpy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, wine, shallot, walnut, ketchup, pepper, flour):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, wine, shallot, walnut, ketchup, pepper, flour. 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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