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Tender Bound Steak

A steak coated in flour, salt, and pepper, seared and steamed with suet and hot water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,459 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Tender Bound Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and sear

  1. Pound the flour, salt, and pepper into both sides of the round steak.

  2. Heat suet or drippings in a frying pan until hot.

  3. Sear both sides of the steak well.

Braise and brown

  1. Nearly cover the steak with hot water.

  2. Cover the pan to retain steam and cook for 20 minutes or until the water evaporates.

  3. Allow the steak to brown on both sides, then serve with gravy made in the pan.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Coats the steak and thickens the pan juices into gravy.
Suet or drippings
Conducts heat for searing and adds rich flavour to the crust.
Round steak (in the method)
Lean cut that becomes tender when cooked slowly in liquid.

The step that matters

Sear both sides of the steak well. A deep, even sear builds browned flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale searing leaves the steak bland and gives the later gravy less flavour to build on.

“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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