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To Warm Up Cold Rump-steaks

This dish warms cold rump steaks with onion, allspice, black pepper, and salt, then grills them to desired doneness.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Warm Up Cold Rump-steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Poach

  1. Place the cold rump steaks in a stew pan.

  2. Add the quartered onion, allspice, and black pepper.

  3. Cover the steaks with boiling water.

  4. Let them simmer gently until warmed through.

Grill and serve

  1. Prepare a hot grill and sprinkle a little salt on it.

  2. Grill the steaks on a slanted gridiron to prevent fat from dripping into the fire.

  3. Cook to your desired doneness, asking your guests for their preference.

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. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Onion + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Rump steaks
Provide the meat that is warmed gently and then seared on the grill for browning.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavor to the poaching liquid as it simmers with the steaks.
Black pepper
Adds mild, sharp aroma and spiciness to the poaching liquid.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic flavor to the poaching liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until warmed through. Boiling rather than gently simmering can toughen the meat's proteins and make it dry. Keeping the water below a rolling boil warms the steaks evenly and keeps them tender before the grill sears the surface.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (allspice, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against allspice, 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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