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Steak and Onions Fried

A fried steak served with sautéed onions and a simple sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Steak and Onions Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the sliced onions in cold water for 1 hour to reduce their strong flavor.

  2. Heat the suet or dripping in a large frying pan over moderate heat.

Cook the steak and onions

  1. Add the steak to the pan and fry, turning often, for about 8 minutes until firm to the touch.

  2. Drain the onions and dry them with a towel, then add them to the pan with the steak if there is room, frying until lightly colored.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. To make the sauce, sprinkle in the flour, add the ketchup, pepper, salt, and water, stirring until it boils.

  2. Strain the sauce over the steak and serve with the onions around it.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + ketchuptop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Steak
Frying over moderate heat firms the meat and browns its surface, giving it flavor.
Onions
Frying softens them and browns their sugars, adding sweetness to the dish.
Suet or dripping
Provides fat for frying, carrying heat evenly and adding richness to the steak and onions.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it heats with the liquid, giving it body.

The step that matters

Drying the onions before frying. Wet onions steam instead of browning in hot fat and can spatter. Patting them dry lets their surface brown lightly, which adds flavor.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, 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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