Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Beef Steak

A slow‑cooked beef steak simmered with tomatoes, onion, spices, and gelatin, served hot and later chilled into a set gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Stewed Beef Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Stew the steak

  1. Place the steak in a saucepan with 1 cup of water.

  2. Add the can of tomatoes and the onion with cloves.

  3. Season with coarse sea salt.

  4. Stew gently for 6 hours without boiling.

  5. Remove the steak and keep it warm on a hot dish.

  6. Take out the onion and blend the gravy until smooth.

  7. Adjust seasoning with more salt, pepper, and sugar to balance the acidity of the tomatoes.

  8. Serve the dish very hot.

Make the set steak dish

  1. After dinner, finely chop the leftover steak, discarding any fat or gristle.

  2. Mix the chopped steak with the remaining gravy.

  3. Season well and add powdered cloves, allspice, and nutmeg.

  4. Measure the mixture and add the appropriate amount of Coxe's Gelatine.

  5. Pour into a mold and refrigerate until set.

  6. Serve sliced for tea.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Steak
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, gentle stewing.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the gravy, which is balanced later with sugar.
Coxe's gelatine
Sets the chopped leftover steak and gravy into a firm, sliceable mold.
Onion
Flavours the gravy with aroma and sweetness while stewing, then is removed.

The step that matters

Stew gently for 6 hours without boiling. Boiling toughens meat proteins and can break up the meat, while slow, gentle heat dissolves collagen so the steak becomes tender and the gravy stays clear.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, clove, pepper, sugar, allspice, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, clove, pepper, sugar, allspice, nutmeg. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes