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Steak, Tenderloin

A broiled tenderloin steak seasoned with butter, coarse sea salt, and black pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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, Tenderloin

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Preheat the broiler.

  2. Cook the steak for about 9 minutes for medium doneness.

  3. Remove the steak from the broiler.

  4. Brush melted butter over the steak.

  5. 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
The main cut, which cooks by direct broiler heat and sets the texture and doneness of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the steak's surface, carrying flavor and helping it feel moist.

The step that matters

Cook the steak for about 9 minutes for medium doneness. Meat proteins tighten and lose moisture as they heat, so the time under the broiler decides whether the steak ends up juicy and pink or dry. Checking it near the target keeps it from overcooking.

“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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