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Warmed-over Beef

A quick pan-fried beef dish with butter, flour, stock, Worcestershire sauce, ketchup, salt, pepper, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Warmed-over Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook until browned.

  3. Add the stock or gravy, Worcestershire sauce, and ketchup.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the sliced beef and simmer for 15 minutes.

  2. Serve on a hot platter, garnished with toast or small 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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Butter
Adds fat and richness to the base of the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks and browns.
Stock or gravy
Provides the liquid that forms the sauce.
Beef
Provides the main protein, cooked gently in the sauce until tender.

The step that matters

Cook the flour until browned. Cooking the flour in the melted butter drives off raw starch taste and builds a nutty, toasted flavor, which gives the gravy depth. Stirring keeps it from scorching before the liquid is added.

“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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