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Fried Kump-steak

Fried steak served with ketchup and optional gravy made from boiling water, butter, pepper, salt, and Harvey's sauce or mushroom ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Fried Kump-steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the steaks

  1. Heat butter or clarified dripping in a frying pan until hot.

  2. Add the steaks and cook, turning frequently, for about 8 minutes or longer if they are thick.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. For gravy, after cooking the steaks, pour a little boiling water into the pan, add pepper, salt, a small piece of butter, and a tablespoon of Harvey's sauce or mushroom ketchup.

  2. Simmer the gravy for a minute or two, then pour it over the steaks and serve immediately.

  3. Serve on a hot dish with a small piece of butter and a tablespoon of ketchup, seasoned with pepper and salt.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  4. Butter + ketchuptop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Pepper + ketchuptop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,207 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Steaks
Provide the main protein, which browns and firms as it cooks in the hot fat.
Butter or clarified dripping
Conducts heat to the steaks and adds richness and browning in the pan.
Harvey's sauce or mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury depth and tang to the pan gravy.

The step that matters

Heating the fat until hot before adding the steaks. Steaks added to fat that is not hot enough simmer in their juices instead of searing. A properly hot pan browns the surface quickly, building flavour and keeping the inside juicier.

“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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