Skip to main content
Main

To Warm Up Cold Rump Steaks

A stew of cold rump steaks simmered with onion, allspice, and peppercorns, finished with a flour‑butter gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Warm Up Cold Rump Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Stew the steaks

  1. Place the cold rump steaks in a stewpan with the quartered onion, allspice, and black peppercorns.

  2. Cover the steaks with boiling water and let them stew gently for one hour.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour and butter together until smooth.

  2. After one hour, add the flour and butter mixture to the stewpan and stir well over the heat for five minutes.

  3. Serve the steaks and onion on a dish, pouring the gravy 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Rump steaks
Slow stewing in liquid turns the tough meat tender and flavourful.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth gravy as it heats.
Butter
Combines with the flour and adds richness and smooth body to the gravy.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and butter into the stewpan. Adding the flour and butter mixture to hot liquid without stirring can leave lumps. Stirring well over heat for five minutes lets the starch swell and thicken the gravy evenly.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes