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Broiled Steak

A steak grilled and seasoned with butter, pepper, and coarse sea salt, garnished with parsley and lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat the grill and grease the bars.

  2. Trim the steak, removing the tough end.

Cook

  1. Place the steak on the grill and cover it.

  2. Once seared, turn the steak to sear the other side.

  3. Continue turning the steak while cooking.

Serve

  1. Transfer the steak to a hot platter.

  2. Season with butter, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Rub a small onion over the platter before serving.

  4. Garnish with parsley and lemon slices.

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. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Porter-house or sirloin steak
Provides the main meat, which browns on the grill and stays tender when not overcooked.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the hot steak as it is seasoned.
Small onion
Rubbed over the hot platter, it leaves a light aroma on the serving surface.

The step that matters

Turning the steak while it cooks. Turning repeatedly, rather than leaving the steak on one side, helps it brown evenly and cook through without a burnt, charred outside. Keeping the grill hot and the steak covered during searing supports this browning.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, parsley, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

“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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