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A Splendid Way to Cook Round Steak

A dish of rolled round steak coated in flour, seasoned, simmered in water, and sliced.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

A Splendid Way to Cook Round Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rolls

  1. Cut the round steak into two or three large strips and flatten them out.

  2. Sprinkle the strips generously with flour and season with pepper and salt.

  3. Finely chop the onion and sprinkle it over the strips if desired.

  4. Roll each strip tightly and tie with string.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the rolls and any bones in a kettle with a little water.

  2. Sprinkle flour over everything and cook gently for three hours.

  3. Remove the strings and slice each roll.

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).

  2. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Round steak
Forms the meat for the rolls, becoming tender through long gentle cooking.
French's white lily flour
Coats the strips and thickens the cooking liquid into a light gravy.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and sweetness as it softens during the long cook.

The step that matters

Cook gently for three hours. Tough round steak needs low, slow heat so its connective tissue breaks down into gelatin. Boiling hard toughens the meat and can make the flour-thickened liquid lumpy or scorched.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper. 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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