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To Stew Beef Steaks

A stew of thick beef steaks cooked with bacon, butter, brown gravy, pickled mushrooms, and cucumber.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

To Stew Beef Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the beef steaks with pepper, salt, and chopped onion.

  2. Layer the steaks in a stew-pan with bacon slices on top and bottom.

Stew

  1. Add butter and stew over low heat for 15 minutes.

  2. Pour in the brown gravy, add pickled mushrooms and cucumber.

  3. Cover and cook until the steaks are tender.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Onion + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 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
Provide the main protein, which becomes tender through slow, moist cooking.
Bacon
Adds fat and smoky, savoury flavour that seasons the steaks as they cook.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stewing liquid and the meat.
Brown gravy
Supplies the cooking liquid that keeps the steaks moist and carries flavour.
Onion
Contributes aromatic sweetness and savoury depth as it softens in the stew.

The step that matters

Cover and cook until the steaks are tender. Tough cuts need long, gentle, moist cooking so collagen breaks down into gelatin. Boiling hard or cooking too briefly leaves the meat chewy, and checking tenderness by feel rather than by the clock is what keeps the result right.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, onion, butter, 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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