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Broiled Steak with Marrow

A steak broiled and served with marrow bone pieces and a mushroom‑olive brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Mushroom and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,571 recipes. Both carry trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Broiled Steak with Marrow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the marrow

  1. Select a marrow bone without meat and have the butcher saw it into 3-inch lengths.

  2. Wash the bones, scrape the ends, wipe dry, and cover each end with a thick paste made of flour and cold water. Tie in cheesecloth.

  3. Boil the wrapped bones in water for 30 minutes. Remove the cloth and paste, then shake out the marrow onto a saucer and keep it hot over water.

Make the sauce

  1. In a brown sauce, add chopped mushrooms and olives, and simmer for 5 minutes.

Broil and serve

  1. Trim excess fat from the steak, gash the gristly fat along the upper edge, and arrange in a greased broiler.

  2. Broil over a clear hot fire or under gas, turning every 30 seconds for 6 to 8 minutes.

  3. Season both sides of the steak with salt and pepper when half done.

  4. Once cooked, arrange the steak on a heated platter, pour the sauce over it, and top with the marrow cut into 1-inch bits.

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. Mushroom + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,571 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Pepper + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  4. Flour + saucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + mushroomtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Marrow bone
Melts into a rich, fatty richness that is spooned over the hot steak.
Steak
Browns on the hot broiler surface while its interior stays juicy.
Mushrooms
Add earthy savoriness and moisture to the brown sauce.
Olives
Add briny acidity that cuts through the rich sauce and marrow.

The step that matters

Broil over a clear hot fire, turning every 30 seconds. Frequent turning and a very hot surface brown the steak evenly and build a crust while keeping the interior from overcooking. Too cool a fire or too little heat leaves the steak grey and dry.

“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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