Skip to main content
Main

Boston Steak

A steak served with a breadcrumb and horseradish sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Boston Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the steaks

  1. Season the steaks with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  2. Baste the steaks with sweet oil.

  3. Broil the steaks until they are rare and nicely colored.

Make the sauce

  1. Combine the bread crumbs and stock in a saucepan.

  2. Add salt and pepper.

  3. Stir the mixture.

  4. Boil for 10 minutes.

  5. Press through a strainer.

  6. Add the grated horseradish and butter.

  7. Stir without boiling.

Serve

  1. Serve the steaks on a hot dish with the sauce in a sauce bowl.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Pepper + horseradishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Bread + horseradishtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together240 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Porterhouse steaks
Provide the main meat, which browns under the broiler while staying tender inside.
Fresh white bread crumbs
Thicken the stock into a smooth, body-rich sauce as they soften and break down.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying flavour and bulk.
Grated horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent heat that cuts through the richness of the beef and butter.
Butter
Adds fat and a glossy finish to the sauce, rounding its flavour.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce without boiling after adding horseradish and butter. Boiling after adding butter can separate the fat from the sauce and dull the sharp volatile flavour of horseradish, which fades with prolonged heat.

Swap the horseradish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, bread, butter):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

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

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes