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Beefsteak

A beef stew made with small beef pieces, onion, flour, stock, and served with fried or toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beefsteak

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Heat the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Lightly fry the onion until soft.

  3. Stir in the flour and cook for a minute longer.

  4. Add the beef and stock, then simmer slowly for 40 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve hot, surrounded by sippets of fried or toasted bread.

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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Beef
Provides the main meat and, with slow simmering, becomes tender and rich in flavour.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth gravy as it cooks with the butter.
Beef stock
Forms the liquid base that the beef and flour cook in, carrying the savoury flavour.
Onion
Softens and adds sweetness and aromatic depth to the base of the stew.
Butter
Adds fat for frying the onion and carries flavour into the stew.

The step that matters

Add the flour and cook it briefly. Cooking the flour in the hot butter for a minute drives off its raw taste and lets it thicken smoothly when the stock is added. Skipping this step can leave a floury, lumpy sauce.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, flour, bread. 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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