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How to Broil Steaks

A method for broiling steaks using melted butter and black pepper over anthracite coal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85,593 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

How to Broil Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim each steak neatly.

  2. Prepare a fire with anthracite coal, allowing it to burn down to emit little or no blue flame.

  3. Add a few pieces of ignited charcoal on top.

Broil

  1. Apply melted butter to the steak and sprinkle with black pepper, but do not add salt.

  2. Start broiling the steak close to the heat for the first part, then move it further away as it cooks.

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. Butter + peppertop 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

Steaks
Provide the main protein that is cooked directly by the radiant heat of the fire.
Melted butter
Adds fat that carries flavor and helps keep the surface of the steak from drying out.
Black pepper
Adds sharp aroma and mild heat-driven flavor to the seared outer surface.

The step that matters

Start close to the heat, then move the steak away. Searing the surface up close browns it and builds flavor, while moving the steak farther away lets the interior cook through without burning the outside.

“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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