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Stewed Rump Steaks

A stew of rump steaks simmered with onion, flour, water, spices, ketchup, and served with pickles and horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 654 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stewed Rump Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the steaks

  1. Melt 1 ounce of butter in a clean frying pan.

  2. Fry the steaks for 5 minutes on each side until light brown.

  3. Transfer the steaks to a clean stew pan.

  4. Melt the remaining butter in the same frying pan.

  5. Fry the chopped onion with the flour until light brown.

  6. Add ½ pint of boiling water to the onion mixture.

  7. Stir until it boils for 5 minutes.

  8. Pour the onion mixture over the steaks.

Stew

  1. Add black pepper, allspice, cayenne pepper, salt, and 1 quart of boiling water.

  2. Let the stew gently for 1.5 hours.

  3. Remove 3-4 tablespoons of gravy.

  4. Mix the gravy with 1 tablespoon of flour and 1 tablespoon of ketchup in a basin.

  5. Stir the thickened mixture back into the stew.

  6. Simmer for an additional 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the steaks in a hot dish.

  2. Pour the sauce over them through a sieve.

  3. Accompany with pickles and scraped horseradish.

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 + horseradishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together654 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Flour + horseradishtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together743 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Ketchup + horseradishtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together223 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 stewing.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and body to the gravy as it browns and softens.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the steaks rather than running thin.
Butter
Carries flavor and browns the steaks and onion before stewing.
Ketchup
Adds acidity and sweetness to the finished gravy.

The step that matters

Let the stew gently for 1.5 hours. Simmering gently rather than boiling hard lets collagen in the rump steak break down slowly, keeping the meat tender instead of tough and stringy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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