Skip to main content
Main

To Fry Beef Steaks

Fried beef rump steaks served with optional onions or potatoes in a butter‑flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Fry Beef Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut rump steaks to the same size as for broiling and dredge them with flour.

Cook

  1. Heat a clean frying pan until hot, then add butter or clarified beef suet.

  2. Place the steaks in the pan and turn them frequently to preserve the juices.

  3. After about 15 minutes, when cooked, season with salt and pepper.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Transfer the steaks to a hot dish and pour off the fat from the pan.

  2. Add 2 ounces of butter rolled in flour and 1 cup of gravy or stock to the pan.

  3. Simmer for a minute, then pour the sauce over the steaks.

  4. Optionally serve with fried onions or fried potatoes.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Rump steaks
Provide the main meat, which cooks through in the hot pan and becomes tender when not overcooked.
Flour
Dredging coats the steaks and later thickens the pan sauce when combined with butter.
Butter
Fat for frying that browns the steak surface and, rolled in flour, thickens the sauce.
Gravy or stock
Liquid base that dissolves pan residue and forms the body of the sauce.

The step that matters

Turning the steaks frequently. Frequent turning in hot fat cooks the steaks evenly and helps retain juices, rather than letting one side dry out or overcook.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, pepper, fried potato):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, pepper, fried potato. 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesFried PotatoesFried Potatoes114 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipes