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To Stew Beef Steaks

A stew of seasoned rump steaks simmered with water, spices, herbs, anchovy, wine, and onion, finished with a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

To Stew Beef Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the rump steaks with salt and pepper.

Stew the steaks

  1. Place them in a stew pot and add water, mace, cloves, sweet herbs, anchovy, butter, white wine, and onion.

  2. Cover and let stew gently until the steaks are tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the steaks, coat them in flour, and fry in fresh butter.

  2. Pour off excess fat, strain the sauce, and add it to the pan.

  3. Heat and thicken the sauce, adding oysters if desired.

  4. Serve the steaks on a dish and pour the sauce over them.

  5. Garnish with your choice of pickle.

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 + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Rump steaks
Main protein that becomes tender through long, gentle stewing.
White wine
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and helps balance the rich flavours.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and flour mixed in helps thicken the sauce.
Onion
Contributes savoury sweetness and aroma to the stewing liquid.
Anchovy
Adds deep savoury flavour that enriches the sauce without tasting fishy.

The step that matters

Stewing gently until tender. Tough rump steak needs low, slow heat so collagen breaks down into gelatin. Boiling hard toughens the meat and can leave it dry and stringy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, clove, anchovy, butter, flour, white wine, onion):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, clove, anchovy, butter, flour, white wine, onion. 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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