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Beefsteak Omelet

A baked omelet made with steak, salt pork, soda crackers, egg, milk, butter, salt, sage, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Beefsteak Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make and bake

  1. In a bowl, mix the steak, salt pork, rolled soda crackers, egg, milk, butter, salt, sage, and pepper with your hands.

  2. Pack the mixture into a tin.

  3. Bake for 1.5 hours.

Serve

  1. Allow to cool, then slice thin.

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. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Pork + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

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

  4. Pork + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw steak
Forms the bulk of the loaf and provides the meaty flavor and texture.
Soda crackers
Absorb liquid and help bind the mixture so it holds together when sliced.
Egg
Binds the ingredients together and sets during baking to give the loaf structure.
Milk
Adds moisture that keeps the loaf from drying out as it bakes.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor that enriches the lean steak.

The step that matters

Allow to cool, then slice thin. Cutting the loaf while hot can cause it to crumble, because the egg and cracker binder needs time to set as the meat firms up.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, egg, milk, butter, pepper):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, egg, milk, butter, pepper. 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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