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Spanish Beef Steak

A beef steak cooked with onion, stock, vinegar, and parsley, finished with a cream‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,563 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Spanish Beef Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Melt the dripping in a stewpan.

  2. Slice the onion and fry it in the dripping, then pour off as much fat as possible.

  3. Cut the steak into pieces, score them on both sides, dip them in salad oil, and coat them thickly with minced parsley.

Simmer and finish

  1. Mix the stock, vinegar, pepper, and salt with the onion in the stewpan, then add the steak.

  2. Simmer gently for 40 minutes.

  3. Mix the flour with the cream and stir it in carefully.

  4. Simmer for 10 more minutes.

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. Tarragon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Tarragon + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  5. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 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

Beef steak
Provides the main meat; longer gentle simmering tenderises its connective tissue into a tender bite.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce as it simmers.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce, softening its sharp edges.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the rich fat.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury depth to the stock base as it fries and softens.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour and cream. Flour mixed with cream must be stirred in carefully so it disperses evenly; added unmixed it clumps, leaving lumps instead of a smooth, thickened sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, flour, tarragon, vinegar, cream, pepper, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, tarragon, vinegar, cream, pepper, parsley. 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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