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Stewed Beef-steaks

A stew of beef steaks browned with onions, simmered in water, seasoned with flour, salt, pepper, and finished with catsup or walnut liquor.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stewed Beef-steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the steaks

  1. Beat the beef steaks with a rolling pin, then season with flour, coarse sea salt, and black pepper.

Fry and stew

  1. Fry the steaks with sliced onions until they are a light brown.

  2. Place the steaks in a stew pan and pour enough boiling water over them to create a sauce.

  3. Stew gently for 30 minutes.

  4. Add 1 tablespoon of catsup or walnut liquor 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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef steaks
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through gentle stewing.
Flour
Coats the steaks, helping them brown during frying and thickening the sauce.
Sliced onions
Browns with the steaks and adds sweetness and savory depth to the sauce.
Catsup or walnut liquor
Adds acidity and savory flavor to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Fry the steaks until light brown. Browning the floured steaks and onions builds flavor through the Maillard reaction. Frying too little leaves the sauce flat, while frying too long can scorch the flour and taste bitter.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Black-eyed peafits better
  2. Sesamefits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, pepper, onion. 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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