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Mock Beefsteak

A veal steak seasoned with coarse sea salt, cooked in fat from browned salt pork, served with butter and black pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Veal and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,930 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Mock Beefsteak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sprinkle coarse sea salt over the leg of veal and let it sit for a week.

  2. Cut the veal into steaks.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry the steaks in the fat from browned salt pork or broil them.

  2. Serve the steaks with butter and black pepper; no additional salt is needed.

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. Veal + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  2. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

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

  3. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  4. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

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

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal leg
Forms the main meat that is salted, cut into steaks and cooked.
Coarse sea salt
Cures the veal over a week, seasoning it and firming its texture.
Salt pork fat
Provides cooking fat and savory flavor when the steaks are fried.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the finished steaks.

The step that matters

Salting the veal for a week. Salt slowly draws moisture out and then the meat reabsorbs it along with the salt, seasoning the meat throughout and changing its texture. Too little time or too little salt leaves the meat bland and less tender, so the full week matters.

“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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