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Beef Steaks, Staffokdshike Fashion

A stew of beef steaks cooked with onions, salted and peppered, simmered in boiling water, finished with mushroom or walnut ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Beef Steaks, Staffokdshike Fashion

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the steaks

  1. Beat the steaks lightly with a rolling pin.

  2. Flour and season the steaks with salt and pepper.

Fry and stew

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

  2. Place the steaks in a stewpan and pour in enough boiling water to make a sauce.

  3. Stew gently for 30 minutes.

  4. Add mushroom or walnut ketchup to flavor and serve.

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 + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef steaks
Main protein; slow stewing in liquid makes the meat tender.
Flour
Coats the steaks so they brown and help thicken the sauce.
Sliced onions
Browning in the pan adds sweetness and savory depth to the sauce.
Mushroom ketchup or walnut ketchup
Adds concentrated savory, umami flavor to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stew gently for 30 minutes. Keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil lets collagen in the beef break down slowly, keeping the meat tender instead of tough and stringy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, pepper, mushroom. 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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