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To Make Tough Steak Tender

A method to tenderize tough steak by pounding, seasoning, and broiling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Make Tough Steak Tender

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Pound the meat with a mallet or meat hammer until the fibers are broken.

  2. Sprinkle the meat with lemon juice, fold it over, and pound again.

  3. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt, fold to about 1¼ inches thick, and press to adhere.

Cook and serve

  1. Broil the steak as you would any steak.

  2. Spread with butter and season with pepper before serving.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  3. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 recipes

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

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Slice of meat from the round or flank
Pounding breaks up its fibers, which is what makes the steak tender.
Juice of 1 lemon
Its acidity helps tenderise the surface of the meat and adds bright flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and moistness to the finished steak.

The step that matters

Pound the meat until the fibers are broken. Mechanically breaking the muscle fibers shortens the path to tenderness. If the pounding is too light, the meat stays chewy, because the fibers that cause toughness remain intact.

“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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