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Steaks or Chops

Grilled steaks or chops seasoned with salt, pepper, mushroom ketchup, butter, horseradish, optional shallot or pickles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 376 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Steaks or Chops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the grill

  1. Season the steaks or chops with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  2. Heat the grill until hot.

  3. Clean and grease the top of the grill bars.

Grill and serve

  1. Place the steaks on the grill, slanting them to prevent fat from falling into the fire.

  2. Broil the steaks for 10 to 15 minutes, turning them often to achieve desired doneness.

  3. Warm a dish with 1 teaspoon of mushroom ketchup for each pound of meat as the steaks cook.

  4. Place each steak in the dish. Sprinkle with salt. Prick with a fork. Rub with butter.

  5. Serve the steaks in the gravy.

  6. Garnish with scraped horseradish and optional minced shallot or pickles.

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. Horseradish + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Ketchup + horseradishtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together223 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Pepper + horseradishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Mushroom ketchup
Forms the savoury gravy the steaks are served in, adding umami and depth of flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, melting over the hot steak to moisten and round the flavour.

The step that matters

Turning the steaks often under the broiler. Frequent turning cooks the meat evenly and keeps the outside from burning before the centre reaches the desired doneness. Fat dripping into the fire causes flare-ups, which is why the steaks are slanted on the grill.

Swap the shallot

The recipe marks shallot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, mushroom, ketchup, meat, butter, horseradish):

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits less well
  4. Chivefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, mushroom, ketchup, meat, butter, horseradish. 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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