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Planked Steak

A steak cooked on a hot plank with butter, salt, pepper, and served with vegetables, potatoes, rolls, and coffee.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and peas match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 313 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Planked Steak

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the plank

  1. Preheat the plank until very hot.

  2. Brush the plank with melted butter.

  3. Dust the plank with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

Cook the steak

  1. Place the steak on the plank.

  2. Put the steak in a gas oven at 400°F (200°C).

  3. Alternatively, broil the steak on one side before placing it on the plank.

  4. Baste the steak frequently. Turn the steak several times.

Prepare and serve

  1. Prepare vegetables for garnish.

  2. Pipe creamed potatoes into roses. Arrange the potato roses around the steak.

  3. Fill the spaces with cauliflower and peas or any other desired vegetables.

  4. Serve the steak with the vegetables. Serve with hot rolls and coffee.

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. Cauliflower + peastop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Potato + peastop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,016 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + cauliflowertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,113 recipes

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

  5. Potato + cauliflowertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together36 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Steak
Is the main cooked protein, whose texture depends on the heat and turning during cooking.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness to the plank surface and the steak.
Potatoes
Creamed potatoes form the piped garnish and add a soft, starchy side.

The step that matters

Preheat the plank until very hot. A properly heated plank starts charring and browning the steak surface quickly and helps it take on smoky flavor. A cool plank steams the meat and can cause the wood to smolder unevenly.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, potato, cauliflower, coffee):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Almondfits about as well
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, potato, cauliflower, coffee. 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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