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Stewed Steak with Chestnuts

Stewed steak with chestnuts is a savory dish of browned steak, sautéed onion, and chestnuts simmered in a gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Stewed Steak with Chestnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chestnuts

  1. Peel the chestnuts.

  2. Boil the chestnuts until tender.

  3. Remove the inner skin from the chestnuts.

  4. Re-boil the chestnuts in salted water until completely tender.

Brown the steak and onion

  1. Cut the steak into fillets.

  2. Dust the fillets with flour.

  3. Heat the dripping in a frying pan.

  4. Brown the steak fillets.

  5. Remove the browned steak from the pan.

  6. Add the onion to the pan.

  7. Cut the onion into half rings.

  8. Fry the onion rings until brown.

  9. Remove the fried onion from the pan.

Make the gravy and stew

  1. Stir the flour into the pan until browned.

  2. Add the stock to the pan.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Skim off any foam or fat as needed.

  5. Season the gravy to taste.

  6. Pour the gravy into a stew pan.

  7. Add the browned steak to the stew pan.

  8. Add the chestnuts to the stew pan.

  9. Simmer the stew slowly for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Arrange the steak in a circle on a serving dish.

  2. Pile the chestnuts in the center of the dish.

  3. Pour the gravy over the steak and chestnuts.

  4. Serve the dish hot.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Chestnut + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together517 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Onion + chestnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together696 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Steak
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during the slow simmer.
Chestnuts
Add a starchy, soft texture and a mild, nutty sweetness to the stew.
Flour
Browns with the fat and thickens the stock into a gravy.
Onion
Browns to add sweetness and savory depth to the gravy.
Dripping
Conducts heat for browning the steak and onion and carries their flavor.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in the pan. Cooking the flour in the hot fat until browned develops nutty, roasted flavor and colour, and removes raw starch taste before the stock is added, so the gravy thickens smoothly without lumps.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chestnut, flour, sauce, tomato, ketchup, pepper. 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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