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Pobk Steaks

Sliced leg meat seasoned with salt, pepper, sage, broiled or fried, basted with butter, served hot with optional apple sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Pobk Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and season

  1. Cut slices from the leg and trim them neatly.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt, cayenne pepper, and a little pulverized sage.

Cook and serve

  1. Broil over a clear fire until done.

  2. Baste with butter and serve hot, with apple sauce if desired.

  3. For frying, remove from the pan and make gravy by adding flour and ⅓ cup of hot water.

  4. Season the gravy to taste, let it boil for two to three minutes, then pour over the steaks and serve hot.

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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Sage + appletop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sage + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 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

Pork leg meat
Forms the main body of the dish, providing the substance that is cooked and served.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture when basted over the hot steaks.
Flour
Thickens the pan liquids into a gravy when frying.

The step that matters

Broil over a clear fire until done. Thin cut steaks dry out quickly over direct heat, so watching for doneness matters. Pork should be cooked through, and the surface should brown without the meat drying out. Basting with butter helps keep the surface moist during cooking.

Swap the apple

The recipe marks apple as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pepper, sage, butter, sauce, flour):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, sage, butter, sauce, flour. 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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