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Stewed Steak

A slow‑cooked beef stew with onions, carrots, turnips, and optional mushrooms, thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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. Trim the skin and fat from the steak.

  2. Tenderize the steak using a chopper or a kreatone.

  3. Cut the steak into convenient pieces.

Brown and stew

  1. Brown the steak in butter on one side in a stewpan.

  2. Turn the steak over.

  3. Add the onions, carrots, and turnips to the stewpan.

  4. Strain off the butter from the pan.

  5. Add the water or stock to the stewpan.

  6. Simmer slowly for about an hour until the meat is tender, turning it halfway through.

  7. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, ketchup, or mushrooms as desired.

Thicken and serve

  1. Remove the meat from the stewpan.

  2. Thicken the gravy with flour.

  3. Boil the gravy for 10 minutes.

  4. Skim the gravy.

  5. Pour the gravy over the steak.

  6. Serve.

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. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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
Becomes tender through slow simmering and provides the main meat for the stew.
Butter
Fat for browning the steak, adding richness and flavor to the pan.
Onions
Soften during simmering, adding sweetness and savory depth to the gravy.
Carrots
Soften during simmering, adding natural sweetness to the stew.
Turnips
Soften during simmering, adding mild earthy flavor to the stew.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth gravy.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly until tender. Tough cuts of beef need long, gentle simmering so collagen breaks down into gelatin. Boiling hard can toughen the muscle fibers and leave the meat chewy, so keep the liquid at a slow simmer.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, onion, carrot, pepper, ketchup, mushroom. 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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