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Sirloin Steak Larded

A roasted sirloin steak larded with pork fat, seasoned, and served with a white broth gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Sirloin Steak Larded

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Trim the sirloin, removing bones, and lard the top with a larding needle.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Line a baking dish with pork skin, carrot, parsley roots, onion, thyme, and bay leaf.

Roast and serve

  1. Place the sirloin on top and roast in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 30 minutes.

  2. Remove from the oven, transfer to a hot dish, and set aside.

  3. Add white broth to the gravy, boil for 2 minutes, skim off fat, strain into a separate bowl, 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.

  1. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  4. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sirloin
Forms the main meat; larding adds fat and moisture as it roasts.
Pork skin
Lards the dish and adds fat that enriches the pan juices and gravy.
Onion
Flavours the pan juices and gravy as it roasts beneath the meat.
White broth
Liquid that dissolves the roasting juices into a thinner, savoury gravy.

The step that matters

Skim off fat from the gravy. Fat rendered from the sirloin and pork skin floats on the liquid and can make the gravy greasy. Boiling briefly and skimming before straining removes most of it, leaving a cleaner sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, pork, carrot, parsley, thyme):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, pork, carrot, parsley, thyme. 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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