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Rump Steaks and Onions

A dish of rump steaks cooked with onions and a sauce of butter, water, mushroom ketchup, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Rump Steaks and Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Peel and slice the onions.

  2. In a frying pan, combine the onions with a little salt and dripping.

  3. Cover and cook for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  4. Remove the cover and fry the onions until brown and tender, stirring to prevent burning.

  5. Transfer the cooked onions to a hot serving dish with a strainer to drain excess fat.

Cook the steaks and sauce

  1. Add more dripping to the frying pan.

  2. Fry the steaks until cooked.

  3. Place the steaks in a hot dish.

  4. Pour off excess fat from the frying pan.

  5. Dredge the pan with flour.

  6. Add the butter, water, mushroom ketchup, and pepper. Mix well, scraping the flour from the pan.

  7. Bring to a boil.

  8. Strain the sauce into the dish with the steaks.

Serve

  1. Serve everything hot, with the onions either in a separate dish or arranged around the steak.

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

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

  2. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Walnut + mushroomtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together763 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook down, turning brown and tender in the fat.
Flour
Thickens the pan juices into a smooth sauce when mixed with the fat and liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and a glossy finish to the sauce.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savory, umami depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Fry the onions until brown and tender. Stirring keeps the onions from scorching on the bottom of the pan, where the sugars would turn bitter instead of sweet and caramelized.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Sesamefits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, flour, butter, mushroom, 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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