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Scraped Beefsteak

A beefsteak cake made by scraping beef, seasoning, and pan‑frying.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Scraped Beefsteak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Scrape enough beefsteak to form a cake about ¾ inch thick.

  2. Cut remaining beef into 1-2 inch pieces.

  3. Heat a frying pan until very hot and sear the meat pieces.

  4. Squeeze lemon juice over the scraped beef and mix until it can be shaped into a cake.

Cook and serve

  1. In a clean, hot frying pan, cook the cake, turning it once or twice.

  2. Place the cake on a hot plate, season with salt, pepper, and butter, garnish with parsley, and cover with another hot plate.

  3. Serve immediately.

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

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

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

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

  3. 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

Beefsteak
Forms the main body of the cake and provides the meaty flavor.
Lemon juice (in the method)
Acidity that helps the scraped beef hold together when shaped into a cake.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the finished cake.

The step that matters

Shaping the scraped beef with lemon juice. The scraped beef must be mixed until it binds into a shapeable mass; under-mixing leaves it crumbly, and the acid in lemon juice helps the proteins in the meat loosen and bind together.

“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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