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Poke Steaks, Broiled

Broiled steak coated in butter and breadcrumbs, served with a vinegar‑stock sauce with pickles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Poke Steaks, Broiled

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the steaks

  1. Trim and season the poke steaks.

  2. Roll the seasoned steaks in melted butter and bread crumbs.

Cook and make the sauce

  1. Broil the steaks over a moderate fire (350°F/175°C) until thoroughly cooked.

  2. In a saucepan, combine vinegar and stock; bring to a boil.

  3. Thicken the sauce with a little flour, then strain it.

  4. Add pepper and finely chopped pickles to the sauce before serving.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Poke steaks
Form the main body of the dish, cooked through by broiling.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating on the outside of the steaks.
Melted butter
Carries the bread crumbs to the steaks and helps the coating brown.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that gives the sauce its tang.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the steaks.

The step that matters

Broil until thoroughly cooked. Broiling at high heat browns the coating quickly, so the crumbs can scorch before the meat is cooked through. Checking doneness in the thickest part protects both texture and safety.

“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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