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Stewed Beef Steaks

Stewed beef steaks simmered in butter with rice, potatoes, peas, and assorted sauces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stewed Beef Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. In a large pot, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the beef steaks and brown on all sides.

  3. Pour in enough water to cover the meat and simmer until tender.

Prepare the sides

  1. Meanwhile, cook the rice according to package instructions.

  2. Boil the potatoes until soft, then mash them.

  3. Prepare the curried rice as per your recipe.

  4. In a separate pan, cook the soles and peas until done.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the fowls with curled bacon and small sausages until golden.

  2. Serve with pickles, oyster sauce, ragout of oyster onions, scollops, pudding, and parsley.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Rice + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together851 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

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

  4. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Potato + peastop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,016 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef steaks
Browning and slow simmering in water turns the tough meat tender and rich.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour for browning the meat at the start.
Potatoes
Boiled and mashed, they add starch and a soft, creamy texture.
Fowls
Roasting browns the skin and cooks the birds through to golden.

The step that matters

Browning the beef steaks on all sides. Searing creates browned flavour through the Maillard reaction. Crowding the pot or skipping sides leaves the meat grey and less flavourful, so brown in batches with space between pieces.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, rice, potato, oyster, sauce, onion):

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Peanutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, rice, potato, oyster, sauce, onion. 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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