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Stewed Steak

A slow-cooked steak with vegetables and a savory gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Stewed Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the steak

  1. Remove all fat from the steak.

  2. Melt the butter in a stewpan over low heat.

  3. Add the steak to the melted butter and fry until it is nicely browned.

Make the stew

  1. When nearly done, add the onion, carrot, turnip, parsley, and celery, and cook gently until the vegetables soften.

  2. In a bowl, mix the flour with the stock or water until smooth, then add salt, pepper, Harvey's sauce, and ketchup.

  3. Pour the mixture over the steak and return the steak to the heat.

  4. Turn the stew occasionally until it begins to boil, then let it simmer gently for 1 hour.

Garnish and serve

  1. Boil the shredded carrot separately in salted water.

  2. Boil the shredded turnip separately in salted water.

  3. Place the steak on a hot dish and garnish it with the boiled carrot, turnip, and a little chopped parsley.

  4. Strain the gravy and serve it around the steak.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Steak
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, gentle simmering in the stew.
Butter
Fat for frying the steak, adding richness and helping the meat brown.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth gravy as it cooks with the liquid.
Onion
Softens into the gravy, adding savoury sweetness and aroma to the stew.
Carrot
Softens during cooking, adding sweetness and body to the gravy.
Turnip
Softens during cooking, adding mild sweetness and body to the gravy.

The step that matters

Browning the steak before adding liquid. Frying the steak until nicely browned develops deep savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Skipping or rushing this step leaves the gravy pale and flat-tasting.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, carrot, turnip, parsley, celery, flour, pepper):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, turnip, parsley, celery, flour, 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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