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Broiled Porterhouse Steak

Broiled Porterhouse steak served with potatoes and lemon garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Broiled Porterhouse Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat the grill and heat the fire bricks until hot.

  2. Season the steak with salt and pepper.

Cook

  1. Place the steak on the grill and put one or both fire bricks on top to keep it flat.

  2. Broil the first side for 3 to 5 minutes, then flip the steak.

  3. Remove the bricks.

  4. Broil the other side for another 3 to 5 minutes, allowing the gravy to collect on top.

Serve

  1. Serve the steak with potatoes around it and garnish with quartered lemon.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  3. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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; its fat and juices develop flavour and browning as it broils.

The step that matters

Weighting the steak with fire bricks. Heavy bricks pressed on the steak while it cooks keep the surface in contact with the heat, so it cooks evenly and stays flat instead of curling. Removing them before the second side lets that side brown properly.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, lemon):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Kalefits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, lemon. 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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