Name: Broiled Rump Steak
Ingredients: 1 rump steak, cut ½ inch thick; 1 ounce butter; ½ teaspoon coarse sea salt; ¼ teaspoon black pepper

Why it works: Butter and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85,593 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Broiled Rump Steak

Ingredients

1 rump steak, cut ½ inch thick
1 ounce butter
½ teaspoon coarse sea salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper

Directions

Preheat the grill over a bright, high heat.
Place the steak on the grill and cook for 8 minutes for rare, 10 minutes for medium, or 12 minutes for well-done.
Transfer the steak to a hot dish.
Quickly rub butter over both sides of the steak.
Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
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.

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

Rump steak: Provides the main meat, cooked directly by the high heat of the grill.
Butter: Adds richness and moisture to the cooked surface of the steak.

The step that matters

Place the steak on the grill and cook for the stated time. Steak continues to cook after it leaves the heat, and the thickness and doneness level both change the required time. Checking against the chosen doneness time keeps the centre from overcooking, which makes the meat dry and tough.

“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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Broiled Rump Steak