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Another Way to Fry Steak

A steak fried in butter, served with brown gravy and tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Another Way to Fry Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pound the beef and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Dip the beef in flour or powdered cracker.

Fry

  1. Heat a pan with more butter than usual until very hot.

  2. Add the steak to the pan and cover.

  3. Fry quickly until crisp and brown.

Serve

  1. Transfer to a platter, make a brown gravy, and pour over the steak.

  2. Serve with tomato sauce.

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. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Beef
Forms the main body of the dish, and pounding it thins the meat so it cooks through quickly.
Flour or powdered cracker
Coats the surface, helping the steak brown and form a crisp crust.
Butter
Conducts heat into the crust and adds richness and browning flavor to the frying.

The step that matters

Fry quickly in very hot butter. The pan must be very hot so the coating crisps and browns before the meat overcooks. Starting with a cool pan lets the coating absorb fat and turn greasy and pale.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, flour, butter, sauce. 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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