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Beef Steak Cooked in a Frying-Pan

Pan-seared beef steak served with a ketchup and flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef Steak Cooked in a Frying-Pan

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pan

  1. Grease a frying pan with a piece of fat and heat it over moderate heat.

  2. Optionally, rub the pan with a piece of onion before cooking.

Cook the steak

  1. Place the steak in the pan and brown it gradually, avoiding drying or burning.

  2. Do not pierce the steak with a fork to keep the juices inside.

  3. Check doneness by pressing; it should not feel spongy.

  4. If the steak is lean, add a piece of butter on top while cooking.

Make the sauce

  1. After cooking, pour water into the pan and stir to combine with the drippings.

  2. Add flour to thicken the sauce, then mix in ketchup, pepper, and salt.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and flour 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

Beef steak
Browns in the pan and provides the main meat and juices for the dish.
Flour
Thickens the pan sauce as it combines with the liquid and drippings.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity to the pan sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to a lean steak while it cooks.

The step that matters

Browning the steak gradually. Moderate heat browns the surface through the Maillard reaction without burning it, while the interior stays juicy. Piercing the meat lets juices escape, and pressing it lets you judge doneness by firmness.

Swap the onion

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

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

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