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To Cook Beefsteak

A method for cooking a beefsteak with butter, salt, and pepper on a hot grill.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

To Cook Beefsteak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pound the beefsteak until the fibers break.

  2. Prepare a grill with plenty of hot coals.

Cook

  1. Broil the steak, turning it frequently.

  2. Ensure the lean part is rare and the fat is cooked.

  3. Collect the juices on a platter.

  4. Add butter to the steak, season with salt and pepper, and turn it over.

Serve

  1. Serve and enjoy.

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. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Beefsteak
The main cut; pounding breaks its fibers so it eats more tender.
Butter
Melts over the hot steak, adding richness, flavor and moisture to the surface.

The step that matters

Keep the lean part rare while cooking the fat. Lean meat overcooks quickly and turns dry, while fat needs more time over heat to cook through. Turning the steak often and checking the lean part helps balance the two.

“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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