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Steak Mansfield

A porterhouse steak cooked with suet, butter, green pepper, celery, parsley, olives, mushrooms, paprika, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Steak Mansfield

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pan

  1. Rub the dish with garlic before cooking.

  2. Melt the suet and butter in a chafing dish over medium heat.

Cook the steak

  1. Add the porterhouse steak.

  2. Let the steak heat on both sides.

  3. Cut the surface of the steak with a sharp knife.

  4. Turn the steak every five minutes.

  5. Baste the steak with the juices.

  6. Sprinkle paprika on the steak while cooking.

  7. Add the chopped green pepper, celery, parsley, olives, and mushrooms.

  8. Cook for 25 to 30 minutes until done.

Finish

  1. Remove the steak from heat and add salt.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Olive + garlictop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,665 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 protein, which browns and firms as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that carries heat and gives the pan a rich flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, and helps brown the surface of the steak.
Mushrooms
Release moisture and absorb the cooking fat, adding savoury depth.

The step that matters

Cut the surface of the steak with a sharp knife. Shallow cuts in the surface let fat and juices reach the meat and help heat penetrate, so the steak cooks more evenly. Cutting too deeply would release juices and dry the meat.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, celery, parsley, olive, mushroom, garlic):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, celery, parsley, olive, mushroom, garlic. 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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