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Fricassee of Beef

A stew of beef cubes simmered in a thickened sauce of onions, bacon, flour, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper 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 ↓

Fricassee of Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the steak into 2-inch square blocks.

  2. Fry the bacon in a skillet until crispy.

  3. Add the sliced onions to the skillet when the bacon grease begins to melt.

  4. Remove the onions when they turn yellow.

  5. Transfer the onions and bacon to a saucepan.

  6. Brown the beef squares in the remaining lard on all sides.

  7. Add the browned beef squares to the saucepan with the onions and bacon.

Make the gravy and simmer

  1. Add 2 teaspoons of flour and 1 cup of cold water to the skillet.

  2. Stir until thickened.

  3. Pour the thickened mixture over the beef in the saucepan.

  4. Let it simmer for 2 hours or until the meat is tender.

  5. Season with salt and pepper 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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Onion + flourtop 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
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow simmering.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy as it heats with the water.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, adding flavor to the gravy.
Bacon
Its rendered fat and smoky flavor season the onions and browning beef.

The step that matters

Browning the beef squares on all sides. Browning creates deeply flavored, colored surfaces through the Maillard reaction. Drying the meat surface first and not crowding the pan helps it brown instead of steaming gray.

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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