Skip to main content
Main

Rump Steaks and Onion Sauce

Rump steaks served with a brown onion sauce made from onions, sugar, flour, broth, and ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 260 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Rump Steaks and Onion Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the steaks

  1. Fry the rump steaks in a pan until cooked to your liking.

Make the onion sauce

  1. In a separate saucepan, heat the dripping over low heat and add the sliced onions and sugar.

  2. Stir the onions until they are browned, then gradually add the flour.

  3. Pour in the broth or hot water, season with salt and pepper, and let it boil gently until the onions are soft.

  4. Strain the onion mixture through a sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. In the same saucepan, heat a little dripping and add another finely chopped onion, stirring until browned.

  2. Add the strained sauce and ketchup, bring to a boil, and serve with the steaks.

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. Sugar + ketchuptop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Onions
Sliced onions brown and soften, giving the sauce its sweetness and body.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the onions and broth.
Dripping
Fat that carries the onions and adds rich savoury flavour.
Broth
Liquid that forms the body of the sauce and carries its flavour.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity to finish the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the onions until browned. Browning the onions develops deep, savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale onions give a flat, under-flavoured sauce, so cook them patiently over low heat without scorching.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, flour, pepper, ketchup):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, pepper, ketchup. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes