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Rump- or Beef-steak, Stewed

A stew of beef or rump steak with onions, turnips, carrots, butter, water, ketchup, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Rump- or Beef-steak, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the meat

  1. Cut the steak into convenient-sized pieces and brown them in butter on both sides.

  2. Clean and peel the vegetables; slice the onions and carrots, and dice the turnips.

  3. Fry the vegetables in the same fat used for the steak.

Stew and finish

  1. Combine the steak and vegetables in a saucepan, add water, and simmer gently for 2.5 to 3 hours.

  2. Skim the surface, then add salt, pepper, and ketchup.

  3. Mix flour with 2 tablespoons of cold water, add to the pot, and let it boil for 1-2 minutes 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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 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

Beef or rump steak
Becomes tender during long gentle simmering, giving the stew its main body and meaty flavour.
Flour
Mixed with cold water and boiled in, it thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy.
Onions
Soften and sweeten during frying and stewing, adding savoury depth to the gravy.
Butter
Browns the steak and carries flavour into the vegetables as the fat for frying.
Turnips
Hold their shape during stewing while adding a mild, slightly sweet earthy flavour.
Carrots
Soften during stewing and add natural sweetness to the gravy.

The step that matters

Simmer gently rather than boiling. Tough connective tissue in steak breaks down slowly at low heat. A hard boil toughens the meat fibres and can make the liquid cloudy, so the stew should stay at a gentle simmer for the full 2.5 to 3 hours.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, turnip, carrot, butter, pepper, ketchup, flour):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, turnip, carrot, butter, pepper, ketchup, 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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