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To Stew Beefsteaks

A stew of beefsteaks cooked in gravy with butter, flour, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Stew Beefsteaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Half-broil the beefsteaks.

  2. Lay them in a stew-pan and season to taste.

Stew

  1. Add enough strong gravy to cover the beefsteaks.

  2. Roll a bit of butter in flour and add it to the pan.

  3. Let them stew for 30 minutes.

  4. Stir in the beaten yolks of two eggs and cook for 10 more minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve it up.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Beefsteaks
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender as they stew in the gravy.
Strong gravy
Provides the liquid and savory flavor in which the steaks stew.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, rounding out the flavor of the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks with the butter and liquid.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the gravy as they set during the final cooking.

The step that matters

Stirring in the beaten egg yolks. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if the liquid is too hot or boiling vigorously when they are added. Keeping the gravy at a gentle simmer helps them thicken it smoothly.

“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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