Name: Baked Beefsteak
Ingredients: 1 porterhouse steak, 2 inches thick; water; sliced onions; 1 can Campbell's tomato soup (optional)

Why it works: Onion and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,633 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Baked Beefsteak

Ingredients

1 porterhouse steak, 2 inches thick
water
sliced onions
1 can Campbell's tomato soup (optional)

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Place the porterhouse steak in a pan with some water.
Cover the steak with sliced onions.
Optionally, add a can of Campbell's tomato soup before baking.

Bake

Bake uncovered in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 30 minutes.

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.

Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,633 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

Porterhouse steak: Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and browned as it bakes.
Sliced onions: Add sweetness and aroma as they soften over the steak.
Tomato soup: Adds moisture and a tangy, savory flavor to the pan 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.