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Steak and Macaroni

A dish of steak pieces cooked with macaroni, onion, peppercorns, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,912 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Steak and Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Cut the steak into neat pieces.

  2. Heat the dripping (or butter) in a saucepan and fry the steak quickly.

  3. Remove the steak from the pan.

Simmer

  1. Shred the onion and add it to the pan with the peppercorns.

  2. Cook for 3 hours, stirring occasionally.

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 + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 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
Main protein; browning on the outside builds savoury flavour and it becomes tender during the long cook.
Dripping or butter
Fat for frying the steak, carrying heat and helping it brown.
Onion
Adds aroma and sweetness as it softens and cooks down in the pan.
Stock
Provides the liquid that moistens and flavours the dish during cooking.
Macaroni
Pasta that absorbs liquid and adds starch and bulk to the dish.

The step that matters

Fry the steak quickly. Searing the steak in hot fat browns its surface through the Maillard reaction, which builds savoury flavour. If the pan is crowded or too cool, the meat steams and turns grey instead.

“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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