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Tough Round Steak

A stew of tough round steak simmered in water with optional onion, thickened with browned flour and optionally finished with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 32,460 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Tough Round Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Sear the steak

  1. Heat a deep skillet or pot until hot enough to sear the meat.

  2. Place the steak in the skillet.

  3. Brown one side of the steak.

  4. Turn the steak.

  5. Brown the other side of the steak.

  6. Cover the steak while searing.

Stew

  1. Add enough warm water to prevent the pot from drying out.

  2. Cover tightly.

  3. Simmer for 30 minutes or until tender.

  4. If desired, slice an onion when adding the water.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Transfer the steak to a hot platter.

  2. Thicken the gravy with browned flour.

  3. Pour the gravy over the steak.

  4. Alternatively, chop the steak finely after stewing.

  5. Thicken the gravy.

  6. Mix the meat into the gravy.

  7. Serve over browned slices of dry toast.

  8. For an improvement, mix a little cream with the flour to make a smooth paste.

  9. Stir the paste into the gravy just before removing from heat.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Onion and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 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

Round steak
Tough cut that becomes tender through long, slow simmering in moisture.
Browned flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy and adds a toasted, nutty flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the gravy when stirred in as a paste.

The step that matters

Sear the steak until well browned on both sides. Browning creates deep flavour through the Maillard reaction. Keeping enough warm water in the pot during the long simmer prevents scorching and drying, which would leave the meat tough.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, cream):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, cream. 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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