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Beef Steaks Broiled

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Shallot and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 376 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Beef Steaks Broiled

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Ensure the fire is clear and not dull or smoky.

  2. Clean the gridiron and rub it with suet.

  3. Place the steaks on the gridiron and brown them, turning often to preserve the juices.

  4. Once done, rub the steaks with fresh butter and season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  5. Sprinkle finely chopped shallot or onion on top.

  6. Serve with oyster sauce, cooked greens, and boiled potatoes.

  7. Garnish with scraped horseradish if desired.

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. Shallot + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Potato + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Shallot + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together272 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  5. Pepper + horseradishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, shallot, oyster, sauce, horseradish):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Welsh onionfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, shallot, oyster, sauce, horseradish. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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