Name: Fillet or Steak a LA Maitre D' Hotel
Ingredients: 2 ounces butter; 1 saltspoonful coarse sea salt; ¼ saltspoonful white pepper; 1 saltspoonful chopped parsley; juice of ½ lemon; fillet or steaks from rump or ribs of beef

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 14,036 recipes mention both. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

2 ounces butter
1 saltspoonful coarse sea salt
¼ saltspoonful white pepper
1 saltspoonful chopped parsley
juice of ½ lemon
fillet or steaks from rump or ribs of beef

Directions

Cut and trim the fillet or steaks.
Rub the butter mixed with salt, pepper, parsley, and lemon juice over the steaks.
Broil the steaks, turning them three or four times to coat with the butter mixture.
Serve with fried potatoes.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together14,036 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
White pepper + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together1,451 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).
White pepper + lemontop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together1,657 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Butter + parsleytop 8% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together28,543 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Butter + beeftop 8% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together10,835 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, parsley, lemon, beef):

Thymebetter flavor fit
Pepperbetter flavor fit
Marjorambetter flavor fit
White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, lemon, beef. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).