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Chip Beef with Tomatoes

A dish of thinly sliced beef simmered with tomatoes, butter, flour, and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,448 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Chip Beef with Tomatoes

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare the tomatoes with a sharp knife.

  2. Heat a saucepan and add the melted butter.

Cook

  1. Cut the tomatoes into 1-inch pieces, dust with flour, and stir into the hot butter.

  2. Cook for 5 minutes, then add white pepper and chip beef.

  3. Stir with a fork, cover, and simmer for 10 minutes.

  4. Add minced parsley if preferred.

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. Tomato + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. White pepper + parsleytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

Tomatoes
Provide the main body and moisture that forms the sauce.
Flour
Dusted on the tomatoes to thicken the sauce as it cooks.
Butter
Fat that carries flavor and helps the flour and tomatoes cook into a sauce.
Chip beef
Supplies salty, savory meat flavor that seasons the dish.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the hot butter. Flour added to hot fat should be stirred in well so it coats the tomato pieces evenly. Dusting the flour on the tomatoes and then stirring it into the butter helps prevent lumps and keeps the sauce smooth as it thickens.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, butter, flour, white pepper, beef):

  1. Tarragonfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, butter, flour, white pepper, beef. 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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