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Broiling Steak

A steak cooked under a broiler, seasoned with salt and pepper, served with butter and garnished with parsley, tomato, 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 ↓

Broiling 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

  1. Preheat the broiling oven to 400°F (200°C) by lighting the burners fully five minutes before cooking.

  2. Trim excess fat from the steak and shape it nicely.

Broil and serve

  1. Place the steak on the broiling rack and position it close to the flame in the broiling oven. Leave the oven door open while cooking.

  2. Sear one side of the steak until browned, then turn it over and sear the other side.

  3. Remove the steak to a hot platter when done.

  4. Pour the contents of the drip pan over the steak or spread with butter.

  5. Sprinkle liberally with pepper and coarse sea salt, and garnish with parsley, tomato, and lemon slices.

  6. Serve immediately.

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. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Steak
Browns on the surface under high direct heat while the inside stays tender.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the surface of the cooked steak.

The step that matters

Position the steak close to the flame and sear both sides. Close, intense heat browns the surface quickly through the Maillard reaction, building flavor before the interior overcooks. Searing both sides evenly gives a well-browned crust.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, 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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