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Washington Steak

A porterhouse steak topped with fried plantains, béchamel sauce, and grated horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and horseradish work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 775 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Washington Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the steak

  1. Trim the steak of bone and fat.

  2. Broil the steak quickly over a hot fire.

  3. Place the steak on a hot platter.

  4. Spread both sides of the steak with melted butter, salt, and white pepper.

Top and serve

  1. Top the steak with the fried plantains.

  2. Pour béchamel sauce over the steak and plantains.

  3. Sprinkle grated horseradish on top.

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. Sauce + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together775 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + bananatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Banana + horseradishtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. White pepper + horseradishtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Porterhouse steak
Provides the main meat, cooked by quick high heat to brown the outside while keeping it juicy.
Plantains
Add sweetness and a soft, caramelized texture when fried in butter.
Béchamel sauce
Adds a creamy, rich layer that moistens the steak and plantains.
Horseradish
Adds sharp heat that cuts through the richness of the butter and sauce.

The step that matters

Broil the steak quickly over a hot fire. High heat browns the surface quickly through the Maillard reaction while the interior stays juicy. Cooking it too long or at low heat dries and toughens the meat.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, banana, sauce, horseradish):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, banana, sauce, horseradish. 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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