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Beefsteak with Dressing

Beefsteak covered in grated bread, baked with water and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Beefsteak with Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cover the steak with grated bread, fold over the edges, and secure with kitchen twine.

  3. Place the steak in a dripping pan with ½ inch of water.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake the steak, turning it once when one side is done.

  2. For added flavor, place the steak on a griddle in the dripping pan.

  3. Season generously with salt, pepper, and butter.

  4. Bake, turning once and basting the other side with the juices.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + buttertop 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

Round steak
The main protein; baking it in water keeps the lean meat moist and tender.
Grated bread
Forms a coating over the steak that holds the dressing in place and helps retain moisture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the surface brown and taste savoury.

The step that matters

Turning and basting the steak. Turning exposes each side to the oven's heat so both brown evenly, and basting with the pan juices returns moisture and flavour to the surface, which keeps the meat from drying out.

“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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