Why it works: Pepper and butter 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 ↓
Beef Steaks
Ingredients
Directions
Grill the steak
Place the steak on a grill over clear coals.
Turn the steak often while cooking.
When half done, remove it and squeeze out as much juice as possible.
Return the steak to the grill and season with salt and pepper.
Finish and serve
Once cooked, place the steak in a dish with the juice.
Add 1 tablespoon of water and a small piece of butter if desired.
Serve immediately.
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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Pepper + buttertop 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
- Sirloin steak
- Forms the dish; its juices are reserved and returned to help keep the meat moist.
- Butter
- Adds fat for richness and a rounder, savoury flavour when melted into the juices.
The step that matters
Squeeze out the juice at halfway. Meat pushes out moisture as it cooks. Collecting that juice and returning it with the steak helps keep the finished meat from drying out, so the juice should be saved, not discarded.
“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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