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 steak until thin.
Heat a dry skillet over high heat.
In a meat dish, combine butter, salt, pepper, and a little water.
Place the dish in front of the stove.
Cook and serve
As the juice cooks out of the steak, pour it into the dish.
Turn the steak and brown the other side.
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
- Is the main protein; browning in the hot pan builds its flavor and crust.
- Butter
- Adds richness and fat, helping the gravy carry flavor over the steak.
The step that matters
Heat a dry skillet over high heat. A very hot, dry pan browns the steak's surface quickly, creating flavorful crust. A cool or wet pan steams the meat instead, leaving it grey and less tasty.
“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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