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Beef Steaks Stewed with Cucumber

Beef steaks stewed in a butter and gravy sauce with cucumbers and onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,050 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef Steaks Stewed with Cucumber

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cucumber sauce

  1. Pare and slice the cucumbers into 1-inch pieces.

  2. In a stewpan, melt the butter and fry the cucumbers and sliced onions until brown.

  3. Add the gravy and dust in the flour.

  4. Cook until the cucumbers are tender, then skim off the fat.

Cook and serve the steaks

  1. Season the steaks with white pepper and coarse sea salt, then fry them quickly in butter.

  2. Place the cooked steaks in a dish and pour the cucumber mixture over them.

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. Cucumber + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cucumber + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 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

Cucumbers
Soften during stewing and form the bulk of the sauce, giving it body and a mild, tender texture.
Onions
Browned in butter, they add sweetness and savoury depth to the stewed sauce.
Gravy
Provides the liquid base of the sauce and carries the flavour of the stew.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks, giving the sauce a smooth, coating consistency.
Rump steaks
Main protein, seared quickly in butter to brown the outside and keep the inside tender.

The step that matters

Browning the cucumbers and onions. Frying until brown develops deep, savoury flavours through browning reactions. Pale vegetables make a flat sauce, so they should be coloured before the gravy goes in.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, onion, butter, 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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