Name: Breakfast Dish of Cold Steak
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons butter; 1 cup chopped cold steak or any boiled meat; 1 tablespoon flour; water (enough to make gravy); pepper (to taste); coarse sea salt (to taste); toast (for serving)

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Breakfast Dish of Cold Steak

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

Heat a skillet over medium heat and add the butter.
Once the butter is hot, add the chopped cold steak.
Sprinkle the flour over the meat and stir well.
Pour in enough water to create a gravy consistency.
Season with pepper and salt to taste.

Serve

Serve the mixture over toast.

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.

Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,594 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together50,459 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,777 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cold steak: Provides the meat and savory bulk of the topping.
Butter: Adds fat and richness for frying the meat.
Flour: Thickens the pan juices into a gravy.

“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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Breakfast Dish of Cold Steak