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Beef Steak with Vegetables

A browned beef steak stewed with water, turnip, carrots, celery, onion, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Beef Steak with Vegetables

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the steak

  1. Dredge the steak with flour.

  2. In a skillet, melt the butter and fry the steak until browned.

  3. Transfer the steak to a stewpan.

Make the stew

  1. Pour water into the frying pan and bring the water to a boil.

  2. Add the boiling water to the steak in the stewpan.

  3. Add the sliced turnip, carrots, celery, and onion.

  4. Season with pepper, salt, and mace.

  5. Garnish with shaped carrots and turnips before serving.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef steak
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender as it simmers in the liquid.
Flour
Coats the steak so it browns well and helps thicken the cooking liquid.
Butter
Carries heat for browning the steak and adds rich flavor.
Carrots
Add sweetness and firm texture that holds up during simmering.
Onion
Adds savory depth and aroma as it softens in the stew.

The step that matters

Browning the floured steak in butter. Browning creates deep flavor through the Maillard reaction. If the steak is crowded or the pan is not hot enough, it steams instead of browning, and the stew tastes flat.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Okrafits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, butter, turnip, carrot, celery, 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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