Name: Stewed Steak and Onions
Ingredients: 1½ lbs Shoulder Steak; 2 large Spanish Onions; 1 pint Water; Salt; Pepper; ½ teaspoon Bovril

Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stewed Steak and Onions

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Cut the steak into pieces and the onions into slices.
Place the steak in a pot and layer the onions on top.

Stew

Add the water, Bovril, salt, and pepper.
Cover the pot and stew slowly in the oven at 300°F (150°C) for about two hours.

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.

Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Shoulder steak: Provides the meat that becomes tender during slow, moist cooking.
Spanish onions: Soften and sweeten as they cook, adding flavor to the stewing liquid.
Bovril: Adds concentrated savory, meaty flavor to the cooking liquid.

“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.