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Stewed Rump Steaks

Rump steak pieces simmered with onion, spices, and a thickened sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and basil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,294 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Stewed Rump Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the steaks

  1. In a frying pan, melt 1 ounce of butter over medium heat and fry the steaks for 5 minutes on each side until light brown.

  2. Transfer the steaks to a clean stew pan.

Make the gravy

  1. In the same frying pan, melt the remaining butter and sauté the chopped onion with the flour until light brown.

  2. Add 1 cup of boiling water to the onion mixture and stir until it boils for 5 minutes.

  3. Pour the onion mixture over the steaks and add the remaining boiling water, black pepper, allspice, cayenne, basil, and salt.

  4. Cover and let it stew gently for 1.5 hours.

Thicken and serve

  1. To thicken, remove 3-4 tablespoons of gravy, mix with 1 tablespoon of flour and 1 tablespoon of ketchup, then stir back into the stew.

  2. Simmer for an additional 15 minutes without boiling.

  3. Serve the steaks on a hot dish, pouring the sauce over them through a sieve.

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. Pepper + basiltop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Allspice + basiltop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together195 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Rump steak
Provides the meat that becomes tender during slow stewing in liquid.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savory depth to the gravy as it browns.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks with the butter and liquid.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the steaks and onion brown.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity to the gravy for extra depth of flavour.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy. Flour mixed directly into hot liquid forms lumps. Mixing it first with a little cooled gravy and then stirring it back in lets it disperse evenly and thicken smoothly without boiling over.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, allspice, basil, 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.

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