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To Warm Up Cold Hump Steaks

This dish stews cold hump steaks with onion, allspice, black pepper, water, flour, butter, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Warm Up Cold Hump Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Stew

  1. Place the cold hump steaks in a stewpan.

  2. Add the quartered onion, allspice, black pepper, and water.

  3. Stew gently for one hour.

Thicken and serve

  1. Thicken the liquid with flour mixed with a little water.

  2. Add the flour mixture and butter to the stewpan.

  3. Shake well over the fire for five minutes.

  4. Serve the steaks and onions on a dish.

  5. Pour the gravy through a sieve over them.

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. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Allspice + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy as it heats.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the gravy, giving it a smoother mouthfeel.
Onion
Softens during stewing and adds sweetness and savoury flavour to the liquid.

The step that matters

Shaking the flour mixture into the liquid over the fire. Flour added to hot liquid can clump if not dispersed. Shaking the pan keeps the starch moving so it thickens the gravy evenly rather than forming lumps.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against allspice, pepper, flour, butter. 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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