Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Steak

A slow‑cooked steak with carrots, turnip, onions, and a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stewed Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the skin and fat from the steak.

  2. Wash the carrot and turnip in cold water.

  3. Scrape the carrot clean and dice it.

  4. Peel the turnip and dice it.

  5. Peel the onions and quarter them.

Make the stew

  1. Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a stewpan over medium heat.

  2. Add the steak and brown it on both sides.

  3. Add the onions, carrot, and turnip to the stewpan.

  4. In a bowl, mix 2 tablespoons of flour, ½ teaspoon of salt, and ¼ teaspoon of pepper.

  5. Gradually stir in ½ pint of water until smooth.

  6. Pour the mixture into the stewpan with the steak and vegetables, stirring until it boils and thickens.

  7. Let it gently simmer for one hour.

Cook the reserved fat

  1. Cut the reserved fat into small pieces and place them on a tin dish.

  2. Cook the fat in the oven until brown.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

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

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, which browns for flavour and becomes tender during slow simmering.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth gravy as it heats and boils.
Butter
Adds richness and helps brown the steak at the start.
Onions
Soften during simmering, adding sweetness and savoury depth to the gravy.
Carrot
Softens while simmering, adding gentle sweetness and body to the stew.
Turnip
Softens during simmering, adding mild sweetness and body to the stew.

The step that matters

Stirring the water into the flour mixture. Flour clumps when hit by liquid all at once. Adding the water gradually while stirring keeps the mixture smooth, so the gravy thickens evenly without lumps as it boils.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, butter, flour, pepper, mushroom, ketchup. 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.

More stewed steak recipes

with Oysters 11and Macaroni 3 See all 40 →

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTurnip SoupTurnip Soup43 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes