Name: Sirloin Steak, with Green Peppers
Ingredients: 2 sirloin steaks; 3 green peppers; 1 tablespoon oil; ½ pint Madeira sauce

Why it works: Pepper and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 27% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,303 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Sirloin Steak, with Green Peppers

Ingredients

2 sirloin steaks
3 green peppers
1 tablespoon oil
½ pint Madeira sauce

Directions

Prepare

Broil the sirloin steaks to your desired doneness.
Remove seeds from the green peppers and mince them finely.

Make the sauce

In a stewpan, heat the oil over medium heat.
Add the minced peppers and cook for about 3 minutes.
Moisten the mixture with the Madeira sauce and cook for 5 minutes longer.

Serve

Pour the sauce over the broiled steaks and serve.

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.

Pepper + saucetop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,303 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Pepper and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,303 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

Sirloin steaks: Provide the main protein, which browns under the broiler and forms the base of the dish.
Green peppers: Soften as they cook, adding moisture and a fresh, slightly bitter vegetal flavor to the sauce.
Madeira sauce: Moistens the peppers and adds a rich, wine-based flavor to the finished sauce.

“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.