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Round Steak

A braised round steak cooked slowly in milk with flour, salt, pepper, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Round Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Pound about ¼ cup of flour into the steak and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Fry the steak in deep fat until browned, turning often.

Simmer in milk

  1. Add milk to cover the meat.

  2. Place a lid on the pan, move it to the back of the range, and simmer for 1 to 2 hours.

  3. Add water as needed.

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 + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + meattop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,703 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + meattop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + milktop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Round steak
Is the main cut that becomes tender during the long, gentle simmer.
Flour
Coats the steak, helping it brown and thickening the milk into a sauce.
Milk
Simmers around the meat, keeping it moist and forming a creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Simmering with the lid on and adding water as needed. Round steak is lean and tough, so it needs a long, gentle simmer to break down its connective tissue. Keeping the heat low and the lid on limits evaporation and scorching of the milk, so the meat stays moist and the sauce does not catch on the pan.

“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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