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Stewed Steak

A stew of beef steak with onions, carrots, turnips, and optional ketchup or mushrooms, thickened with flour and garnished with peas or beans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stewed Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the steak

  1. Tenderize the steak using a flat side of a chopper or a meat tenderizer.

  2. Cut the steak into convenient pieces.

Brown and stew

  1. Fry the pieces in butter until browned on both sides.

  2. Fry the onions, carrots, and turnips in the same butter until softened.

  3. Combine the meat and vegetables in a clean stewpan with water or stock.

  4. Simmer slowly until the meat is tender, turning it halfway through.

  5. Skim off any fat.

  6. Season with salt and pepper.

  7. Add ketchup or mushrooms if desired.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Remove the meat.

  2. Thicken the gravy with flour.

  3. Bring the gravy to a boil.

  4. Skim again.

  5. Pour the gravy over the steak.

  6. Serve garnished with peas or beans.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

Beef or rump steak
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, slow simmering.
Butter
Browns the meat and vegetables, adding richness and savoury flavour.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, adding flavour to the gravy.
Carrots
Soften during stewing and add gentle sweetness to the gravy.
Turnips
Soften during stewing and add body and mild flavour to the dish.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth gravy as it heats.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly until the meat is tender. Tough cuts need long, gentle heat to break down connective tissue. Rapid boiling toughens muscle fibres and can leave the meat dry and chewy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, carrot, turnip, pepper, ketchup, flour. 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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