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Smothered Steak

A steak cooked in a gravy of mashed onions, seasoned with pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and beef 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 ↓

Smothered Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the onions in a small amount of water until tender.

  2. Pound and wash the beef steak, then season it with pepper and salt.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat beef dripping in a pan and fry the steak until cooked through.

  2. Remove the steak and keep it warm on a dish.

  3. Drain and mash the cooked onions in the pan with the steak gravy, adding more pepper and salt to taste.

  4. Heat the onion mixture until hot, then pour it over the steak and serve.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Softens into a mashed base that thickens the gravy and adds gentle sweetness.
Beef steak
Main protein that browns in the fat and gives the dish its meaty core.
Beef dripping
Fat for frying that browns the steak and carries flavor into the gravy.

The step that matters

Drain and mash the cooked onions. Excess water from boiling dilutes the gravy and keeps it thin. Draining well lets the mashed onions thicken the sauce and cling to the steak.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper. 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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