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Beefsteak with Bananas

A steak served with fried plantains and béchamel sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Beefsteak with Bananas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the steak

  1. Trim the steak of bone and fat.

  2. Broil the steak quickly and place it on a hot platter.

  3. Mix melted butter, salt, and white pepper, then spread on both sides of the steak.

Add the plantains and serve

  1. Fry the plantains in butter until golden, then lay them on top of the steak.

  2. Pour béchamel sauce over the steak and serve immediately.

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. Butter + bananatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Butter + white peppertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Banana + saucetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together155 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. White pepper + saucetop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together525 recipes

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

Porterhouse steak
Provides the main protein and meaty bulk of the dish.
Plantains
Caramelize in butter for sweetness and a golden, browned surface.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor, while browning in the pan for the plantains.
Béchamel sauce
Adds creamy moisture that softens the steak and plantains.

The step that matters

Broil the steak quickly. A quick, very hot broil browns the surface while keeping the inside juicy. Overcooking squeezes out moisture and leaves the steak tough and dry.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, banana, sauce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, banana, sauce. 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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