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Steak a LA Creole

A steak topped with a tomato, mushroom, olive, and rice sauce flavored with paprika.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Steak a LA Creole

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the steak

  1. Broil the steak to your desired doneness.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine tomatoes, mushrooms, olives, rice, and butter.

  2. Bring to a boil and let simmer for 10-15 minutes.

  3. Stir in the beaten eggs and paprika just before serving.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce over the broiled steak.

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. Tomato + olivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

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

  2. Olive + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,994 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,571 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Tomato + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten eggs stirred in at the end thicken the sauce gently and add richness.
Butter
Adds fat and a rich mouthfeel to the sauce.
Rice
Adds body and bulk, helping the sauce feel substantial.
Tomatoes
Provide acidity and liquid that form the base of the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the beaten eggs just before serving. Eggs thicken when heated, but if they are added too early or the sauce boils hard after they go in, they can scramble into small curds instead of creating a smooth, lightly thickened sauce.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, olive, rice, butter, egg):

  1. Asparagusfits about as well
  2. Tomatothe original
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, olive, rice, butter, egg. 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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