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Broiled Porterhouse Beef Steak

A steak grilled over a broiler with butter, lemon, parsley, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Broiled Porterhouse Beef Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the steak

  1. Wipe the steak with a cloth dampened in cold water and trim excess fat.

  2. Grease a wire broiler and lock the steak in, with the fat edge next to the handle.

Broil

  1. Broil over a clear fire, turning every 15 seconds for the first 2 minutes to retain juices.

  2. Cook for 5 minutes for rare or 6 minutes for well done, turning occasionally.

Make the butter and serve

  1. Remove the steak to a hot serving dish.

  2. In a small bowl, cream the butter with a wooden spoon, then slowly mix in salt, pepper, parsley, and lemon juice.

  3. Spread with Maitre d'Hotel Butter.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Porterhouse steak
Forms the main body of the dish and carries most of the flavour and texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and melts into the hot steak to carry flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and balances the meat.
Parsley
Adds fresh, herbal aroma to the butter.

The step that matters

Turning the steak during the first 2 minutes. Frequent short turns over high heat set the surface quickly and help retain juices inside the meat, so the steak stays moist rather than drying out.

“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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