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Rump Steaks with Gravy

A stew of rump steaks served with a sauce made from the meat's own liquor, butter, flour, wine, mushroom ketchup, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Rump Steaks with Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Simmer the meat gently for about 1.5 hours.

  2. Strain off 1½ pints of the liquor for the sauce.

Make the gravy

  1. Melt 2 ounces of butter in a stew-pan.

  2. Stir in enough flour to make a stiff paste.

  3. Add 1 tablespoon of claret or port wine, 1 tablespoon of mushroom ketchup, ½ teaspoon of salt, and ¼ teaspoon of ground black pepper.

  4. Gradually add the strained liquor and let it boil for 15 minutes.

  5. Skim the sauce and strain it again.

Serve

  1. Serve the steaks with onions around the dish and pour the gravy over.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Port wine + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together570 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the gravy and adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Forms a stiff paste with the butter that thickens the liquor into a gravy.
Claret or port wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury umami depth to the gravy.
Liquor from simmered meat
Provides the meaty liquid base that gives the gravy its body and flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the strained liquor to the flour paste. Flour thickens smoothly only when liquid is added gradually to the butter-flour paste while stirring. Adding it all at once can leave lumps, so the sauce should be stirred steadily as it boils.

“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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