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Broiled Steak

A steak cooked over hot coals, seasoned with salt and pepper, topped with butter and optional pepper vinegar and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Broiled Steak

Oven, in the book's wordsThe hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Grill the steak

  1. Preheat a grill or gridiron over hot coals.

  2. Beat the steak to tenderize it.

  3. Place the steak on the grill, turning it frequently.

Season and serve

  1. Prepare a hot dish.

  2. Place the cooked steak on the dish.

  3. Season the steak generously with salt and pepper.

  4. Spread the butter over the steak, pressing it in to absorb.

  5. If desired, drizzle with pepper vinegar and mustard for extra flavor.

  6. Set the dish over boiling water to keep warm until 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.

  1. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Butter + mustardtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,003 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Porter-house steak or tenderloin
Provides the meat that is cooked, tenderized by beating, and served.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and moisture to the surface of the cooked steak.

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, vinegar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Cabbagefits less well
  4. Onionfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, vinegar. 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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