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Beef Steak Stewed in Its Own Gravy

A stew of beef steak pieces simmered in its own gravy with catsup and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,459 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Beef Steak Stewed in Its Own Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the steak

  1. Trim all fat and skin from the steak and cut it into pieces.

  2. Dip the steak pieces in cold water and let them drain briefly.

  3. Sprinkle both sides with pepper and coat them thickly with flour.

Stew

  1. Place the steak flat in a well-tinned iron saucepan or stewpan with 1 tablespoon of cold water left in it.

  2. Cook over a very gentle fire, simmering for 1.5 to 1.75 hours until tender.

  3. Add salt when it begins to boil and turn the steak when more than half done.

  4. For added flavor, mix in gravy, catsup, and spices to taste.

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 + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 long, gentle simmering.
Flour
Coats the steak and thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy-like sauce.

The step that matters

Cook over a very gentle fire. Simmering gently keeps the liquid below a hard boil, so the muscle fibres relax slowly and the meat turns tender instead of tough and stringy.

“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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