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Beefsteak a LA Mode

A steak cooked in butter with lemon slices and served with stock or port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and port wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,499 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Beefsteak a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a chafing dish with the lemon slices.

  2. Add the steak and cook slowly for 5 to 10 minutes.

  3. Pour the stock or port wine over the steak before serving.

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 + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Lemon + port winetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Beefsteak
The main protein, which firms and browns as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the steak brown in the pan.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity and aroma that flavour the butter and steak.
Stock or port wine
Adds moisture and savoury or sweet flavour to the steak.

The step that matters

Cook the steak slowly. Gentle heat lets the steak cook through evenly. High heat can toughen and overbrown the outside before the centre is done.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, port wine. 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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