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Beef Steaks Broiled

Broiled beef steaks served with butter, pepper, sea salt, shallot, oyster sauce, greens, potatoes, and optional horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and horseradish 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 ↓

Beef Steaks Broiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the grill

  1. Ensure the fire is clear and not smoky or flaring.

  2. Clean the gridiron and rub the bars with suet.

Cook and season

  1. Place the steaks on the gridiron and brown them, turning often to preserve the juices.

  2. Once done, rub the steaks with fresh butter and season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Sprinkle the chopped shallot or onion over the steaks.

Serve

  1. Serve with oyster sauce, cooked greens, and boiled potatoes.

  2. Garnish with scraped horseradish if desired.

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. Shallot + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Potato + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Shallot + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together272 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  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

Steaks
The main protein, browned on the hot gridiron to develop flavour and colour.
Suet
Rubbed on the bars to add fat that keeps the steaks from sticking.
Fresh butter
Added after cooking to give richness and a glossy finish to the meat.
Shallot or onion
Adds a mild sharp sweetness and aroma over the hot steaks.

The step that matters

Turning the steaks often. Frequent turning on a hot surface helps the meat brown evenly while limiting juice loss, so the steaks stay moist rather than drying out on one side.

Swap the horseradish

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

  1. Chivefits about as well
  2. Horseradishthe original
  3. Mustardfits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, shallot, oyster, sauce, potato. 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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