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Stewed Rump Steaks

A stew of rump steaks simmered with onions, 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.

  2. Fry the steaks for 5 minutes on each side until light brown.

  3. Remove the steaks and place them in a clean stew pan.

Make the gravy

  1. In the same frying pan, melt another ounce of butter and add the chopped onions and flour.

  2. Cook until the mixture is light brown, then add 1 cup of boiling water and stir until it boils.

  3. Pour the onion mixture over the steaks and add the remaining boiling water.

  4. Sprinkle with black pepper, allspice, cayenne, basil, and salt.

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

Thicken and serve

  1. To thicken, remove 3-4 tablespoons of gravy and mix with 1 tablespoon of flour and 1 tablespoon of ketchup.

  2. Stir this mixture back into the stew and simmer for 15 minutes.

  3. Serve the steaks on a hot dish, pour the sauce over them, and serve with pickles and scraped horseradish.

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

Steaks
Browning in butter builds flavour, then slow stewing makes the meat tender.
Butter
Fat that browns the steaks and onions, adding richness and savoury flavour.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it cooks, adding body and flavour to the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks with the butter and onions.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness, acidity and colour to the thickened sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the onion and flour. Cooking the flour in butter until light brown toasts it, removing raw starch taste and building flavour before the liquid is added. Stirring keeps it from scorching and lumping.

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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