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Stewed Steak a LA Russe

A stew of rump steak with carrot, turnip, onion, butter, flour, and stock, simmered for an hour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stewed Steak a LA Russe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Trim the fat and skin from the steak.

  2. Melt the butter in a stewpan and brown the steak on both sides.

  3. Add the flour and brown it.

Make the stew

  1. Add the chopped vegetables.

  2. Pour in the stock and stir until it boils.

  3. Remove from heat and let it simmer gently for about an hour.

Vegetables and serve

  1. Shred the carrot and turnip, and boil them separately.

  2. Serve the steak on a hot dish, season the gravy with salt and pepper, and strain it over the meat.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 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 main meat, which softens during long gentle simmering.
Butter
Adds fat for browning the steak and carries flavour into the stew.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a gravy as it cooks.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and some sweetness as it cooks down.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body to the gravy.
Turnip
Adds a mild, earthy flavour and extra body to the dish.

The step that matters

Stir the stock in until it boils. Flour that is added before liquid can clump if it is not stirred in well. Stirring as the stock heats keeps the flour dispersed, so the gravy thickens smoothly without lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, pepper, butter, flour):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, pepper, butter, flour. 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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