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Deviled Steak

Steak cooked in a buttery gravy with onion, mustard, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Deviled Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the steak

  1. Melt butter in a frying pan.

  2. Slice the onion and fry it in the butter until brown, then remove the onion.

  3. Cut the steak into pieces 3 inches long and 2 inches wide, dredge lightly in flour, and fry in the butter.

Make the gravy

  1. Remove the meat from the pan and add salt, vinegar, mustard, pepper, paprika, and the remaining flour to the butter.

  2. Add the hot water and replace the steak in the frying pan.

  3. Cover closely and simmer until the steak is tender.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot platter, pour gravy over it, and garnish with fried potatoes.

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 + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flank steak
Provides the meat that becomes tender during slow simmering in the gravy.
Flour
Lightly coats the steak for browning and thickens the gravy as it cooks.
Butter
Fat for frying the onion and steak, adding browning and rich flavour.
Onion
Browned in butter to add sweetness and savoury depth to the gravy.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the gravy its sharp, tangy character.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that defines the deviled character of the sauce.

The step that matters

Cover closely and simmer until the steak is tender. Flank steak is lean and tough, so it needs gentle, moist, prolonged heat to break down its connective tissue. Too hard a boil can toughen the meat and reduce the gravy too quickly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, mustard, vinegar. 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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