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Beef Steak with Alderman's Sauce

A beef steak simmered with onion, water, Worcestershire sauce, ketchup, apple, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Beef Steak with Alderman's Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Roll the beef steak in flour, pepper, and salt.

  2. Slice the onion and brown it with the meat quickly in the dripping.

Simmer and serve

  1. Place the meat and onion in a stewpan, pour over the water and sauces.

  2. Skim when boiling, then simmer slowly for one hour.

  3. Serve on a dish and strain the sauce 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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

  4. Ketchup + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef steak
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during slow simmering.
Flour
Coats the meat so the surface browns and helps thicken the sauce.
Onion
Browns in the dripping and adds savoury sweetness to the sauce.
Dripping
Conducts heat for quick browning and adds richness to the meat.
Tomato ketchup
Adds acidity and sweetness that give the sauce its tangy flavour.
Grated apple
Adds sweetness and body to the sauce as it simmers.

The step that matters

Brown the meat and onion quickly. Searing over high heat builds browned flavour on the surface. If the pan is crowded or too cool, the meat steams and turns grey, and the sauce loses depth.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, flour, onion, sauce, tomato, ketchup, sugar):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, onion, sauce, tomato, ketchup, sugar. 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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