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Tough Portions of Porterhouse Steak

A stew of tough porterhouse steak pieces simmered with vegetables, olives, and optional sauces.

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

Tough Portions of Porterhouse Steak

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Cut the tough end of the porterhouse steak into small pieces.

  2. Put the pieces into a soup kettle or stew pot.

Stew

  1. Add leftover vegetables and olives for flavor.

  2. If desired, add a few drops of bottled meat sauce or Chili sauce.

  3. Cook until tender, about 1-2 hours.

Alternative method

  1. Alternatively, grind the tough steak, form into meatballs, and broil with tender portions.

  2. Season the ground meat with onion juice, lemon rind, or parsley for added flavor.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Olive + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Tough end of porterhouse steak
Long, slow cooking breaks down tough connective tissue, leaving the meat tender and moist.
Vegetables from dinner
Add body and flavor to the stewing liquid as they cook down.
Olives
Add a briny, savory note that brightens the rich meat.

The step that matters

Cook until tender. Tough cuts need enough time at a gentle simmer for collagen to convert to gelatin. Stopping early leaves the meat chewy, while boiling hard can toughen the muscle fibers.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, meat, sauce, lemon, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, meat, sauce, lemon, parsley. 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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