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A Simple Stewed Steak

A stew of steak cooked with onions, spices, and a sauce, thickened with flour.

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 ↓

A Simple Stewed Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the steak

  1. Heat the clarified suet or fat in a stewpan over medium heat.

  2. Add the steak and sliced onions; sear for a few minutes, turning several times.

Stew

  1. Cover the steak with gravy or water, then add the button onions or sliced Spanish onion, lemon peel, pepper, salt, and allspice.

  2. Simmer until the steak is cooked through.

  3. Remove the steak and skim the gravy carefully.

  4. Stir in browning sauce and mushroom ketchup.

  5. Keep the steak warm on a hot stove or return it to the stewpan to warm up.

  6. If the gravy is too thin, stir in a little flour to thicken.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Lemon + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Steak
Is the main protein that becomes tender through slow simmering in liquid.
Clarified suet or fat
Searing fat that browns the steak and onions and carries flavour.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, adding body and flavour to the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy by starch swelling in the hot liquid.
Browning sauce
Adds deep brown colour and a savoury, caramelised flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Searing the steak. Searing over medium heat browns the surface through the Maillard reaction, building flavour in the fat before liquid is added. Turning often prevents scorching and uneven colour.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, pepper, allspice, sauce, mushroom, ketchup, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, pepper, allspice, sauce, mushroom, ketchup, 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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