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Fried Beef-steaks

Fried beef steaks served with a gravy made from butter, flour, pepper, salt, and shallots.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,081 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Beef-steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and fry

  1. Season the rump steaks with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  2. Fry the steaks in a little butter until thick and brown.

  3. Remove the steaks and place them in a dish.

  4. Pour out the fat from the frying pan.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Add ½ pint of hot gravy (or hot water), flour, pepper, coarse sea salt, and chopped shallots to the pan.

  2. Boil the mixture for two minutes, then pour it over the steaks.

  3. Serve immediately.

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. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + shallottop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Rump steaks
Main protein; frying in butter browns the surface and sets a firm, thick texture.
Butter
Fat for frying that browns the steaks and adds richness to the pan.
Flour
Thickens the pan juices and gravy into a sauce as it cooks.
Shallots
Add mild onion-like sweetness and aroma to the sauce as they cook.

The step that matters

Frying the steaks until thick and brown. Browning needs a hot pan and enough fat so the surface caramelises and develops flavour rather than steaming grey. Pan-frying steaks to a thick, browned crust gives deeper savoury flavour than cooking them through gently.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Okrafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, 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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