Why it works: Pepper and butter 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 ↓
Chopped Steak
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the steak
Remove the bone and all gristle from the sirloin steak.
Chop the steak until finely minced.
Season the minced steak with coarse sea salt and black pepper.
Form the mixture into a large flat cake about ½ inch thick.
Cook and serve
Heat a good-sized piece of butter in a skillet until hot.
Fry the steak cake in the skillet until browned on both sides.
Make a little gravy in the skillet and pour it over the meat before serving.
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.
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Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Sirloin steak
- Provides the meat that forms the patty, giving it its beefy flavor and chewy-tender bite.
- Butter
- Conducts heat in the skillet and browns the patty's surface, adding rich flavor.
The step that matters
Fry the steak cake until browned on both sides. Browning depends on a hot pan and a dry surface. Heat the butter until hot before adding the patty, and avoid crowding or moving it too early, so it forms a crust instead of steaming in its juices.
“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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