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To Stew Beef-steaks

A slow-cooked stew of beef steaks simmered with onion, water or gravy, vinegar, pepper, salt, and thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

To Stew Beef-steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Fry the steaks in a little butter.

  2. Remove the steaks from the pan and fry the minced onion in the same pan.

  3. Return the steaks to the pan with boiling water or gravy, pepper, salt, and vinegar.

  4. Stew gently for 2 to 3 hours.

Thicken and serve

  1. Thicken the sauce with butter rolled in flour before serving.

  2. Serve with or without pickles.

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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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 steaks
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender during long gentle stewing.
Butter
Adds richness and helps brown the steaks before stewing.
Minced onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma to the sauce as it cooks.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the rich meat.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when rolled with butter and stirred in.

The step that matters

Stew gently for 2 to 3 hours. Low, gentle heat breaks down tough meat fibres slowly. A hard boil toughens and dries the meat, so keep the liquid at a bare simmer.

Swap the onion

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

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

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