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Beef-steak a-LA-Francaise

A steak marinated in Lucca oil, then fried with butter, parsley, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Beef-steak a-LA-Francaise

Ingredients

Directions

Marinate and rest

  1. Pour the Lucca oil over the rump steak and let it marinate overnight.

  2. Press the oil from the steak.

  3. Let the steak sit by the fire for 15 minutes.

Fry and finish

  1. Place the steak in a frying pan with enough water to prevent burning.

  2. Fry the steak until the gravy recedes and it turns brown.

  3. Mix butter with finely chopped parsley, pepper, and salt, then spread the mixture over the steak.

  4. Fry the steak until fully cooked.

  5. Pour the pan contents over the steak for gravy.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. 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
Main protein that becomes tender and browns during frying.
Lucca oil
Marinades the steak, adding moisture and flavour before cooking.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries the parsley and pepper over the steak.

The step that matters

Fry the steak until the gravy recedes and it turns brown. Browning depends on the surface drying and reacting at high heat. Water in the pan must cook off so the meat browns rather than steams, and the gravy forms from the juices released during cooking.

“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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