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Fried Beefsteak

A pan‑fried beef steak served with a brown gravy made from flour and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Fried Beefsteak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pan

  1. Heat a frying pan until very hot.

  2. Grease with enough butter to prevent sticking.

Cook the steak

  1. Fry the salt pork until brown, then remove it.

  2. Fry the steak in the remaining fat, seasoning with salt and pepper.

  3. Add a little butter when serving.

Make the gravy

  1. In the same pan, add dry flour to the remaining fat and stir until brown.

  2. Pour in boiling water and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Serve the gravy in a tureen.

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 + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Beef + peppertop 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. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

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

Beef steak
Is the main meat, cooked directly in the hot fat to brown on the outside.
Salt pork
Renders fat into the pan that cooks the steak and flavours the dish.
Dry flour
Browns in the pan fat and thickens the boiling water into a gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the pan and is added to the steak when serving.

The step that matters

Stir the flour until brown. The flour must be cooked in the fat until it browns, which develops flavour and colour and removes its raw taste. Adding the water too early leaves the gravy pale and floury.

“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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