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To Warm Cold Steaks

A stew made by warming cold steak with onion, allspice, pepper, water, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour 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 Cold Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place pieces of cold steak in a stew pan.

  2. Slice the onion and add it to the pan.

  3. Add allspice berries and black peppercorns.

  4. Pour in a little water and cover tightly.

Stew and finish

  1. Stew gently for one hour.

  2. Thicken the liquid with butter and flour mixed together.

  3. Serve everything on the same dish.

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. Butter + flourtop 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).

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

Cold steak
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, gentle stewing.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savory aroma to the braising liquid as it softens.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the flour thicken the liquid smoothly.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy when cooked with butter.

The step that matters

Covering tightly and stewing gently. A tight lid keeps steam and moisture in the pan, so the meat stays juicy. Gentle heat lets tough connective tissue break down slowly without the liquid boiling away or the meat toughening.

Swap the allspice

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, flour. 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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