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Beefsteak and Onions

Beefsteak cooked with onions in a skillet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beefsteak and Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sprinkle the steak with pepper, salt, and flour.

  2. In a hot skillet, melt the lard.

Cook

  1. Add the steak to the skillet.

  2. Pour boiling water over the steak.

  3. Cover the steak with the sliced onions.

  4. Cover the skillet and cook for 5 minutes.

  5. Turn everything over.

  6. Cook for an additional 5 minutes, ensuring the onions do not burn.

Serve

  1. Transfer the steak and onions to a hot platter.

  2. Place the onions on top of the steak.

  3. Serve immediately.

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

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

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 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

Beef steak
Provides the main body of the dish, cooked through in the pan with the onions.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften and brown in the pan juices.
Flour
Coats the steak, helping it brown and thickening the pan juices slightly.
Lard
Fat for frying that carries heat evenly and adds richness to the steak.

The step that matters

Turning everything over. The onions sit on the steak and can scorch against the hot pan before the steak cooks through. Turning at the midpoint, then watching the onions during the second five minutes, keeps them from burning.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, 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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