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 ↓
A Quick Way to Broil Steak
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Pound the tenderloin steak until thin.
Heat a dry skillet over high heat.
Cook and make the gravy
In a pan, combine butter, salt, pepper, and a little water.
Set the pan in front of the stove.
As the juice cooks out of the steak, pour it into the pan.
Turn the steak and brown the other side.
Serve
Saturate the steak with the gravy and serve hot.
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.
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Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Tenderloin steak
- Provides the meat; thinning it lets it cook quickly and evenly under high heat.
- Butter
- Adds richness and flavour to the pan gravy and aids browning.
The step that matters
Turn the steak and brown the other side. Browning needs a very hot pan and enough time for the surface to brown, as the Maillard reaction builds colour and flavour. Too little heat leaves the steak grey and steamed, while overcooking dries out a thin cut.
“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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