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Beefsteak Smothered with Onions

A beef steak cooked in a pan with browned onions, lard, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beefsteak Smothered with Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Pare and slice the onions.

  2. Pour boiling water over the onions to remove the extreme flavor.

Cook

  1. Fry the onions in a mixture of lard and butter until nicely browned.

  2. Season the onions with salt and pepper at the start.

  3. Push the onions to one side of the frying pan and fry the steak in the same pan.

Serve

  1. Serve the steak on a hot platter, covered with the onions and gravy.

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. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + beeftop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Soften and brown to give sweetness and deep savory flavor.
Lard
Fat that carries heat evenly and helps the onions brown.
Butter
Adds fat and a rich, nutty aroma as it browns with the onions.
Beef steak
Main protein, browned in the pan and served with the onions and gravy.

The step that matters

Fry the onions until nicely browned. Browning comes from caramelization of the onion sugars and Maillard reactions. Too little heat leaves them pale and flat, while too much heat burns them bitter.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Onionthe original
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Tomatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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