Skip to main content
Main

To Fry Steak

A steak fried in butter after seasoning and flouring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

To Fry Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Hack the steak well.

  2. Sprinkle the steak with salt, pepper, and a little flour.

Fry

  1. Heat a skillet over high heat.

  2. Add the butter to the skillet.

  3. Add the steak to the skillet.

  4. Turn the steak frequently.

  5. Make several openings in the steak to allow the butter to seep through.

Serve

  1. Place the steak on a hot platter.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + flourtop 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

Tenderloin or porterhouse steak
Forms the main body of the dish and is cooked directly in the fat.
Flour
Light coating on the surface that helps the steak brown in the pan.
Unsalted butter
Fat that conducts heat to the steak and carries flavor into it through the openings.

The step that matters

Make several openings in the steak to allow the butter to seep through.. Butter alone browns only the outside. Openings let fat penetrate the meat, so heat and flavor reach inside more evenly and the steak cooks through without drying on the surface.

“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.

More fried steak recipes

Chicken 5with Onions 5 See all 23 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes