Skip to main content
Main

Broiled Steak

A thick steak cooked over an open flame, seasoned with salt, pepper, butter, parsley, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Broiled Steak

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Remove the steak from the paper and wipe it with a damp cloth.

  2. Cook the steak in a toasting rack over a clear fire, turning frequently at first.

  3. Reduce the temperature toward the end of cooking, which takes 7 to 20 minutes depending on thickness and desired doneness.

Serve

  1. Place the cooked steak on a hot platter.

  2. Add salt, pepper, and butter on top.

  3. Garnish with parsley and sliced lemon.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Steak
Forms the main body of the dish, browning on the surface while the interior cooks through.
Butter
Melts over the hot steak, adding richness and a glossy, moist finish.

The step that matters

Reduce the temperature toward the end of cooking. High heat browns the surface quickly, but lowering it near the end lets the centre reach the desired doneness without scorching the outside.

“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.

More broiled steak recipes

Pan 5 See all 129 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes