Name: Milk Steak
Ingredients: 2 pounds steak; 1 cup finely chopped onions; Salt and pepper to taste

Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Milk Steak

Ingredients

2 pounds steak
1 cup finely chopped onions
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Steam the steak for three hours with the chopped onions, seasoned with salt and pepper.
Prepare the milk sauce and add it one hour before serving.

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.

Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Steak: Provides the main protein, which becomes tender as its connective tissue softens during long, moist cooking.
Onions: Soften during cooking and add sweetness and aroma to the steak and its juices.

“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.