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Planked Steak

Steak cooked on a hot plank with butter, salt, pepper, served with vegetables and potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and peas match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 313 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Planked Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the plank

  1. Preheat the plank until very hot.

  2. Brush the plank with melted butter and dust with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

Cook the steak

  1. Place the steak on the plank.

  2. Put it in a gas oven or broil on one side first if preferred.

  3. Baste the steak frequently.

  4. Turn it several times while cooking.

Prepare the garnish and serve

  1. Prepare any vegetables you want to garnish the steak.

  2. Cream the potatoes.

  3. Run the potatoes through a pastry tube to create a decorative border.

  4. Make potato roses in any desired color.

  5. Place the potato roses between the vegetables.

  6. Serve the steak with hot rolls and coffee.

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. Cauliflower + peastop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Peas + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,016 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Pepper + cauliflowertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,113 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Cauliflower + potatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together36 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Steak
Is the main protein, cooked directly on the plank to brown the surface while the inside cooks.
Potatoes
Creamed and piped into borders and roses, giving a soft, rich texture and decorative garnish.
Melted butter
Brushed on the plank and steak, adding fat for flavor and helping the surface brown.

The step that matters

Turn and baste the steak frequently. Turning and basting keep the surface from drying out and help it brown evenly. Too little attention can leave the steak unevenly cooked or dry.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, cauliflower, potato):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Peasthe original
  3. Almondfits about as well
  4. Lentilsfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, cauliflower, potato. 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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