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Stewed Beef Steak

A slow-cooked stew of bullock steak with onions, flour thickened gravy, served with dumpling balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and onion 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 Beef Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Cut the steak into long thin strips, then into small dice.

Make the stew

  1. In a pot, combine boiling water, salt, and pepper.

  2. Add the meat to the pot.

  3. Boil for a few seconds.

  4. Reduce heat to simmer until tender, about 1.5 hours.

  5. After 30 minutes, add the minced onions.

  6. Mix flour with cold water until smooth.

  7. Stir into the gravy.

  8. Season with more salt and pepper if needed.

  9. Cook until the gravy thickens.

Serve

  1. Serve the stew on a dish.

  2. Garnish with small dumpling balls.

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

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

  2. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. 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

Bullock steak
Provides the meat that becomes tender during the long simmer.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy when heated.
Minced onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they cook into the stew.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and cold water into the gravy. Flour mixed directly into hot liquid can clump. Mixing it smooth with cold water first lets it disperse evenly, so the gravy thickens without lumps.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour. 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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