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Stewed Beef-steak

A stew of beef steak cooked with butter, onion, walnut ketchup, wine, shallot, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 440 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Stewed Beef-steak

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the steak

  1. Heat a stewpan over low heat and add the steak with butter.

  2. Cook until the butter turns into a white gravy, then pour it into a bowl.

  3. Add more butter to the steak and cook until done.

  4. Return the gravy to the stewpan, fry the steak, then add it back to the gravy.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in wine and shallot, stew for 10 minutes, and serve hot.

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. Walnut + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + shallottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  5. Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Steak
Forms the main body of the dish and is cooked gently in butter until done.
Butter
Cooks the steak and browns into a gravy that carries flavour through the dish.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the gravy as it stews.
Shallot
Adds a mild, aromatic onion flavour to the stewed sauce.

The step that matters

Returning the steak to the gravy. Frying the steak after it has been in the gravy can toughen the meat and dry out the surface. Keeping the heat low and the pan covered helps the meat stay tender and juicy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, walnut, ketchup, pepper, wine, shallot, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, walnut, ketchup, pepper, wine, shallot, 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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