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Beef Steak Stewed in Its Own Gravy

A stew of rump steak pieces simmered in their own gravy with salt, pepper, flour, catsup, and optional spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,459 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Beef Steak Stewed in Its Own Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the steak

  1. Trim all fat and skin from the steak and cut it into pieces.

  2. Dip the steak in cold water and let it drain briefly.

  3. Sprinkle both sides with pepper and coat thickly with flour.

Cook

  1. Place the steak in a well-tinned iron saucepan with 1 tablespoon of cold water.

  2. Cook over low heat, simmering for 1.5 to 1.75 hours until tender.

  3. Add salt when it begins to boil.

  4. Turn the steak when more than half done.

  5. Mix in catsup and spices if desired.

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 + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Rump steak
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, gentle simmering.
All-purpose flour
Coats the steak and helps thicken the cooking liquid into a gravy.
Catsup
Adds sweetness and acidity to the finished stew.

The step that matters

Cook over low heat, simmering for 1.5 to 1.75 hours until tender. Gentle simmering lets tough connective tissue in the steak break down slowly. Boiling hard can toughen the meat and dry the outside, so keep the liquid at a quiet simmer.

“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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