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Making Tough Steak Tender

A simple oil, vinegar, and cayenne pepper mixture that tenderizes steak by marinating for up to an hour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,814 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Making Tough Steak Tender

Ingredients

Directions

Marinate

  1. Combine salad oil, vinegar, and cayenne pepper in a dish.

  2. Place the steak in the mixture and let it marinate for 1 hour.

  3. Turn the steak over and let it marinate for another hour.

Cook

  1. Fry or broil the steak as usual.

Overnight option

  1. Marinate the steak overnight, turning it around 10 o'clock.

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 + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Salad oil
Coats the steak and carries the seasoning, helping keep the surface moist.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that begins to soften the meat's surface proteins.

The step that matters

Turning the steak during marinating. Turning the steak over partway through makes sure both sides spend equal time in the acidic oil mixture, so the marinade softens the meat evenly rather than only on the side resting in the dish.

“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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