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Broiled Beefsteak

A thick beef steak broiled over coals, served with butter, coarse sea salt, or maitre d'hotel or mushroom sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Broiled Beefsteak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the flank end of the steak for other uses.

  2. Grease the broiler with a little fat from the meat.

Broil and serve

  1. Broil the steak over red-hot coals, turning every 10 seconds to sear the outside.

  2. For rare, broil for 8 minutes; for well done, broil for 12 minutes.

  3. Serve on a hot platter and season with butter and coarse sea salt, or top with maitre d'hotel sauce or mushroom sauce.

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 + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Beef + saucetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,650 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Beef steak
Provides the meat that is seared on the outside while the inside cooks to the chosen doneness.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the finished steak when served on it.

The step that matters

Searing the outside over red-hot coals. Frequent turning every 10 seconds helps build a browned crust on the surface while the interior stays cooler, so the steak does not overcook before it reaches the desired doneness.

“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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