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Beefsteak Broiled in a Skillet

A thick prime porterhouse or T-bone steak is broiled in a hot skillet with salt, pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Beefsteak Broiled in a Skillet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the steak

  1. Trim the bone from the steak.

  2. Trim excess fat from the steak.

  3. Cut through the edges of the steak to prevent curling.

Sear and cook

  1. Preheat a skillet over a roaring hot fire until very hot.

  2. Optionally, rub a piece of fat over the skillet to prevent sticking.

  3. Place the steak in the skillet.

  4. Sear one side of the steak thoroughly.

  5. Turn the steak.

  6. Sear the other side of the steak, maintaining high heat.

  7. Cook the steak for about 10 minutes.

  8. Turn the steak two or three times during cooking.

  9. If a well-done steak is desired, cook longer.

  10. Check that the steak is pink in the middle.

Finish and serve

  1. Season the steak with salt and pepper before serving.

  2. Add small pieces of butter on top of the steak before serving.

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 + buttertop 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

Porterhouse or t-bone steak
Provides the main protein; its thickness lets the outside brown while the middle stays juicy.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel as it melts over the hot steak.

The step that matters

Sear one side thoroughly over very high heat. A very hot, well-preheated skillet browns the surface quickly through the Maillard reaction, building flavor and a crust. A cool pan steams the meat, leaving it grey and less tasty.

“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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