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Italian Beef-steaks

A seasoned steak cooked slowly over high heat in a covered iron pan, served with its own gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and onion 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 ↓

Italian Beef-steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the steak and season it with pepper, salt, and chopped onion.

  2. Place the steak in a covered iron stew pan without adding water.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook it by the side of the fire on high heat for 2 to 3 hours until tender.

  2. Serve the steak with its own gravy.

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. Pepper + oniontop 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 main meat; long covered cooking breaks down its connective tissue into tenderness.
Onion
Adds aroma and savory sweetness as it cooks into the juices.

The step that matters

Cooking until fully tender. Connective tissue in tougher cuts breaks down slowly in moist heat. Stopping early leaves the steak chewy, so it should cook until it is fully tender rather than by time alone.

“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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