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Stewed Steak

A hearty stew of rump steak with carrots, turnip, celery, onions, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Stewed Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the steak neatly.

  2. Cut the carrot and turnip into julienne strips or other garnishes, and soak the garnish in cold water until needed.

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the butter in a stewpan and brown the steak.

  2. Remove the steak and brown the sliced onions.

  3. Add the flour to the pan, mix smoothly, and cook until biscuit-brown.

  4. Gradually add the water while stirring, and boil for 2-3 minutes.

Stew and serve

  1. Add the carrot, turnip, celery, and fried onions to the pan.

  2. Return the steak to the pan and stew gently for 1.5 to 2 hours.

  3. Add salt and pepper when the steak is partly cooked.

  4. Boil the garnish of carrot and turnip in separate pans until tender, about 5 minutes.

  5. Strain and place in cold water until needed, then reheat in boiling water 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. Carrot + turniptop 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

Rump steak
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle stewing.
Butter
Browns the steak and onions and carries their flavour into the stew.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, rich sauce.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth as they brown and soften in the stew.
Water
Forms the liquid that the flour thickens and the steak stews in.

The step that matters

Browning the flour to biscuit-brown. Cooking the flour until it turns biscuit-brown toasts it and removes raw floury taste. Stopping too early leaves the sauce pale and pasty, while going too far gives a bitter flavour.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

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