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Porterhouse Steak

A thick cut porterhouse steak seasoned with flour, pepper, and sea salt, pan‑fired and served with a gravy made from the drippings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓

Porterhouse Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sprinkle flour, pepper, and coarse sea salt over the steak.

Cook

  1. Heat equal parts of butter and lard in one iron pan.

  2. Place the steak in the heated pan.

  3. Cover the steak with another pan.

  4. Cook for one hour, turning once if the steak is very thick.

Serve

  1. Use the drippings to make gravy, adjusting quantity as needed.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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

Porterhouse steak
Forms the main body of the dish, providing the meat that is cooked and served.
Butter
Adds fat for browning and rich flavor when heated in the pan.
Lard
Adds fat that tolerates high heat, supporting browning and producing drippings for gravy.
Flour
Coats the surface, helping the steak brown and thickening the drippings for gravy.

The step that matters

Cook for one hour, turning once if very thick. A thick steak cooked for a long time can dry out or overcook at the surface before the center is done. Turning once helps the heat reach both sides evenly and promotes even browning.

“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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