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Another Way to Stew Beef Steaks

A slow‑cooked stew of beef steaks flavored with bacon, spices, vinegar, onions, herbs, Port wine, and lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Another Way to Stew Beef Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the steaks from the rump of beef.

  2. Dip bacon strips in garlic vinegar, then roll them in the spice mixture of mace, pepper, nutmeg, and salt.

  3. Lard the steaks thickly and evenly.

Stew

  1. Place the steaks in a pot with vinegar, onions, sweet herbs, Port wine, and lemon peel.

  2. Cover the pot tightly and seal the edges with a wet cloth to prevent steam from escaping.

  3. Stew gently over low heat for nearly five hours, turning the steaks halfway through.

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef steaks
Rump provides the main meat that becomes tender through long, slow stewing.
Fat bacon strips
Melting fat bastes the lean beef from within, adding moisture and richness during cooking.
Onions
Break down during stewing, adding sweetness and body to the cooking liquid.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the stewing liquid as it reduces.
Vinegar
Acidity helps soften the tough connective tissue in the beef over long cooking.

The step that matters

Sealing the pot tightly. A wet cloth sealing the lid keeps steam inside, so the liquid stays at a gentle simmer and the beef cooks in moist heat rather than drying out over the long stew.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, garlic, vinegar, pepper, nutmeg, onion, port wine):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, garlic, vinegar, pepper, nutmeg, onion, port wine. 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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