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Stewed Steak with Rice, and Tomatoes

A stew of steak, rice, onions, tomatoes, and seasonings simmered slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,065 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Stewed Steak with Rice, and Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and stew

  1. Cut the steak into nice pieces and place them in a stewpan with the hot water, salt, pepper, and sliced onion.

  2. Cover closely and let it stew gently for 2 to 3 hours.

  3. Shake the stewpan often to prevent burning.

Add rice and tomatoes

  1. Wash the rice and add it to the stew during the last hour of cooking.

  2. Add the halved tomatoes in the last hour as well.

Brown the onion

  1. For a brown stew, fry the onion in 1 oz. of drippings before starting.

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. Rice + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. 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

Steak
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, gentle stewing.
Rice
Absorbs liquid and thickens the stew as it cooks.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma to the stewing liquid.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and moisture, giving the stew a fresher flavour.

The step that matters

Cover closely and stew gently. Long, gentle heat with a tight lid breaks down the connective tissue in the steak, making it tender. Boiling hard toughens the meat and can scorch the bottom of the pan.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, pepper, tomato. 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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