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Steamed Steak

Steamed steak pieces seasoned with salt, pepper, mace, and flour, then steamed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Steamed Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the steak into neat pieces.

  2. Dust the pieces with flour and seasonings.

  3. Roll them lightly around your finger.

Steam

  1. Place the pieces in a jar without any water.

  2. Steam for 3 hours.

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. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + macetop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,974 recipes

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Lean shoulder steak
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, gentle steaming.
Flour
Lightly coats the pieces, helping the seasoning cling and slightly thickening the juices.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, pepper):

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper. 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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