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Steak

A steak cooked by broiling, seasoned with butter, salt, and pepper, and garnished with lemon, parsley, tomatoes, or watercress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat the serving platter thoroughly.

  2. Melt the butter and mix in salt and pepper.

Cook and serve

  1. Broil the steak for 20 minutes if it is 2 inches thick, 15 minutes if 1.5 inches thick, or 10 minutes if 1 inch thick.

  2. Carefully lift the steak to the heated platter and baste with the butter mixture.

  3. Garnish with thin slices of lemon, parsley, tomatoes, or watercress.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + watercresstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together469 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Lemon + watercresstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together579 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 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, which firms and browns under high heat while staying juicy inside.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying the salt and pepper over the surface of the cooked steak.

The step that matters

Broiling the steak for the right time. Cooking time depends on thickness, so a thinner or thicker cut can easily end up over- or undercooked. Matching the time to the measured thickness helps the surface brown while the centre stays at the intended doneness.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, lemon, parsley, watercress. 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.

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