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Steaks or Chops

Grilled steak or chop seasoned with salt, pepper, mushroom ketchup, butter, horseradish, and 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

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

  2. Preheat the grill until hot, then clean and grease the gridiron.

Grill

  1. Place the steaks on the gridiron, slanting it to prevent fat from falling into the fire.

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

Finish and serve

  1. Warm a dish with 1 teaspoon of mushroom ketchup for each pound of meat.

  2. Place each steak in the dish.

  3. Sprinkle with salt.

  4. Prick with a fork.

  5. Rub with butter.

  6. Serve the steaks in the gravy.

  7. 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. Horseradish + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Shallot + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,431 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mushroom ketchup
Supplies the savory, umami-rich gravy that the steaks are served in.
Butter
Adds richness and a glossy finish that carries flavour over the hot meat.
Steaks or chops
The main protein, browned on the grill and finished in the warm gravy.

The step that matters

Turning the steaks during broiling. Turning often heats the meat evenly and helps it reach the desired doneness without scorching the outside. Slanting the gridiron lets fat drip away from the fire, which would otherwise flare up and char the meat.

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, onion):

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

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