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Fillets of Beef a LA Diable

A steak rubbed with butter, seasoned with coarse sea salt, and finished with lemon juice, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Fillets of Beef a LA Diable

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut a 1½ inch thick steak from a well‑hung rump of beef.

  2. Beat the steak and place it between a wire gridiron.

Cook and serve

  1. Broil over a quick fire for about 5 minutes on each side, ensuring it is not too close to the heat.

  2. Rub the cooked steak with butter, sprinkle with coarse sea salt, and squeeze lemon juice over it.

  3. Serve on a very hot dish with a hot cover.

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 + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

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

  3. Beef + lemontop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,278 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

Rump steak
Provides the lean, beefy main component that is cooked and served whole.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the cooked surface of the steak.

The step that matters

Broil over a quick fire without placing the steak too close to the heat. A quick, moderately distant fire cooks the outside to browning while the inside stays juicy. Too close a heat chars the surface before the centre cooks through, leaving it dry or unevenly done.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Grapefits about as well
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter. 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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