Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Nice Way to Cook Steak
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Cut the steak into evenly sized pieces.
Dip the pieces in ice water.
Roll the steak in flour.
Fry
Fry the steak in plenty of butter and lard until cooked through.
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.
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
- Steak
- Provides the main protein that is cooked through in the hot fat.
- Flour
- Forms a dry coating that browns and crisps when fried in fat.
- Butter
- Adds richness and flavor, and browns in the frying fat.
- Lard
- Provides a high-temperature frying fat that crisps the coating.
- Ice water
- Dampens the surface so the flour coating adheres evenly before frying.
The step that matters
Fry the steak in plenty of butter and lard until cooked through. Enough hot fat keeps the oven-free surface frying evenly and crisps the flour coating. Too little fat cools the pan, so the coating steams and absorbs grease instead of browning.
“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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