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Fried Beefsteaks

Fried beefsteaks cooked with their own fat and seasoned with pepper and coarse sea salt, finished with a gravy of boiling water or catsup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Fried Beefsteaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut some fat from the steak and place it in a frying pan over medium heat.

  2. If the steaks are not very tender, beat them with a rolling pin.

Fry the steak

  1. When the fat is boiling hot, add the steak to the pan and cover it.

  2. Fry briskly until one side is done, then sprinkle with pepper and salt.

  3. Turn the steak and cook to your desired doneness.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Transfer the steak to a hot dish.

  2. Add boiling water or catsup to the pan to make gravy, let it boil once, and pour it over the steak.

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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef steak
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked quickly in hot fat until done to taste.
Fat from the steak
Renders into the frying pan to provide hot fat for searing the steak.
Boiling water or catsup
Dissolves the pan drippings to make a thin gravy that moistens the steak.

The step that matters

Fry briskly in very hot fat. The fat must be boiling hot before the steak goes in. Hot fat sears the surface quickly, browning it and sealing in juices, while a cool pan would let the steak steam and turn grey and tough.

“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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