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Staffordshire Beef-steaks

Beef steaks fried with onions, simmered in boiling water, finished with ketchup or walnut liquor.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Staffordshire Beef-steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the steaks

  1. Beat the beef steaks lightly with a rolling pin.

  2. Season with flour and coarse sea salt.

Cook

  1. Fry the steaks with sliced onion until light brown.

  2. Place the steaks in a stew pan and pour boiling water over them to create sauce.

  3. Stew gently for 30 minutes.

  4. Add 1 tablespoon of ketchup or walnut liquor before serving.

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. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + ketchuptop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Beef + ketchuptop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 through gentle stewing.
Flour
Coats the steaks, helping them brown and thickening the sauce as it cooks.
Sliced onion
Adds sweetness and savory depth as it browns with the meat.
Ketchup or walnut liquor
Adds acidity and tangy flavor to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the steaks until light brown. Browning the flour-coated steaks builds flavor through the Maillard reaction. Frying too briefly leaves the sauce flat, while overcooking can toughen the surface and scorch the flour.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, 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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