Skip to main content
Main

Vexison' Steak

A steak cooked with butter, sherry, and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sherry and currant work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 393 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Vexison' Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Broil the steak

  1. Rub the steak with butter.

  2. Broil the steak as you would beefsteak, but do not overcook.

  3. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Finish and serve

  1. Add sherry and currant jelly.

  2. Cover and leave for 2 minutes.

  3. Serve on very hot plates.

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. Sherry + curranttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Sherry + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. 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

Steak
Forms the main dish; broiling browns its surface while the inside stays tender if not overcooked.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the surface brown under the heat.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma, and mixes with the meat juices to form a light sauce.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness that balances the sherry's acidity and gives the sauce body.

The step that matters

Do not overcook the steak. Long exposure to high heat squeezes moisture out of the meat's proteins, leaving it dry and tough. Pulling it when just done keeps it juicy and tender.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Plumfits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sherry, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes