Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Beef Steaks

Grilled beef steaks rubbed with suet, seasoned with sea salt, served with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,847 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Boiled Beef Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the grill

  1. Preheat the grill until hot and rub the grill bars with suet.

  2. Sprinkle a little salt over the fire.

  3. Set the grill at a slant to prevent fat from falling onto the coals.

Cook the steaks

  1. Place the steaks on the grill and turn them often.

  2. Keep a dish close to the fire to drain the gravy from the steaks.

  3. If smoke appears, remove the steak for a moment.

  4. Cook the steaks over a brisk fire for about 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the steaks on a hot plate with a small slice of butter on each.

  2. Pour the gravy over the steaks, adding a pinch of salt.

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. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef steaks
Provide the main meat, which browns on the hot grill and stays juicy when cooked briefly.
Suet
Rubbed on the grill bars to add a little fat that keeps the steaks from sticking.
Butter
Melts over the hot steaks, adding richness and a silky finish.

The step that matters

Keep the fire brisk and watch for smoke. A hot fire sears the outside quickly, and fat dripping onto the coals causes flare-ups and smoke that can scorch the meat. Moving the steak briefly away from the flames when smoke appears prevents bitter, burnt flavour.

“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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes