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Bump Steak Stewed

A stew of thick steak, mushrooms, gravy, stock, port wine, and brown sauce, served with horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Port wine and mushroom work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 570 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Bump Steak Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Fry and stew

  1. Fry the steak over a brisk fire until browned.

  2. Place the steak in a stewpan with gravy, stock, port wine, and chopped mushrooms.

  3. Stew gently until the steak is tender.

  4. Add brown sauce to the stewpan and shake gently.

Serve

  1. Dish the steak.

  2. Top with scraped or grated horseradish.

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. Port wine + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together570 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Pepper + horseradishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Sauce + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together775 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 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

Steak
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through gentle, long stewing.
Brown sauce
Adds depth, colour and body to the stewing liquid.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and acidity that balance the rich, savoury sauce.
Chopped mushrooms
Add savoury, umami flavour and moisture to the stew.
Gravy
Adds savoury richness and body to the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Stew gently until the steak is tender. Connective tissue in the steak breaks down slowly at low, steady heat. Rapid boiling toughens the meat and dries the liquid, so the stew should only simmer.

Swap the horseradish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (port wine, mushroom, sauce, pepper, sugar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against port wine, mushroom, sauce, pepper, sugar. 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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