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Menu for a Little Home Dinner

A stew of steak with onions, beans, celery, carrots, and walnut ketchup, finished with a Marsala and butter gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot 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 ↓

Menu for a Little Home Dinner

Ingredients

Directions

Braise the steak

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

  2. Place the steak in a stew-pan with water or broth, onion, beans, celery, carrots, walnut ketchup, sugar, Marsala, pepper, and salt.

  3. Cover and stew gently until the meat is tender.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Remove the steak.

  2. Strain the gravy.

  3. Place the steak on a hot dish.

  4. Dice the vegetables.

  5. Arrange them over the steak.

  6. Thicken the gravy with butter and flour.

  7. Add a tablespoon of Marsala.

  8. Pour it hot over the steak.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Beans + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Celery + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Beans + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,159 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  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

Steak
Browns in butter for flavour, then turns tender through slow stewing in liquid.
Butter
Browns the steak and later enriches the gravy as a fat.
Marsala
Adds wine acidity and sweetness that deepens the gravy's flavour.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the gravy by swelling in the hot liquid with the butter.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the stewing liquid.
Walnut ketchup
Contributes a savoury, umami depth to the gravy.

The step that matters

Stew gently until tender. Collagen in tough cuts breaks down slowly at low, steady heat. A hard boil toughens muscle fibres and leaves the meat chewy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, beans, celery, carrot, walnut, ketchup, sugar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, beans, celery, carrot, walnut, ketchup, sugar. 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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