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Steak a LA Stanley

A steak served with fried banana halves and a cream‑horseradish sauce, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 562 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Steak a LA Stanley

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce and bananas

  1. Fry the banana halves in olive oil until golden.

  2. Mix the cream sauce with horseradish and whipped cream.

Cook and assemble

  1. Broil the steak until medium rare.

  2. Place the fried bananas on top of the steak in rows.

  3. Cover with the cream sauce mixture and serve garnished with parsley.

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. Horseradish + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Banana + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together797 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Horseradish + olivetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together475 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Porterhouse or club steak
Provides the main meat, cooked by broiling to medium rare.
Bananas
Soften and turn golden when fried, adding sweetness and a caramelised browned surface.
Cream sauce
Adds richness and moisture over the steak and bananas.
Horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent heat that balances the richness of the cream.
Whipped cream
Lightens the sauce and gives it a soft, airy texture.

The step that matters

Use horseradish that is as dry as possible. Horseradish loses its pungency and gains moisture when wet or stale, which can thin the cream sauce and dull its sharp flavour. Dry horseradish keeps the sauce thick and well flavoured.

Swap the banana

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sauce, horseradish, olive, parsley):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sauce, horseradish, olive, parsley. 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.

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