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Steak, Small

A small steak cooked under a broiler, brushed with butter and seasoned with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85,593 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Steak, Small

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the steak

  1. Preheat the broiler.

  2. Cook the steak for about 6 minutes for medium doneness.

  3. Remove the steak from the broiler.

Finish

  1. Brush melted butter over the steak.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

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 + 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
Provides the main protein; its surface browns under the broiler's high heat, building flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the surface and carries flavor as it melts over the hot steak.

The step that matters

Remove the steak from the broiler. Meat keeps cooking from its own residual heat after it leaves the broiler, so removing it at the right moment helps it reach medium rather than overcooked.

“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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