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Broiled Beefsteak

A steak cooked by searing and then finishing in a hot pan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85,593 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Broiled Beefsteak

Ingredients

Directions

Sear

  1. Heat a frying pan until very hot.

  2. Lightly rub the pan with butter or suet.

  3. Add the pounded steak and quickly turn it to sear both sides.

  4. Move the pan to a cooler spot to cook the steak through.

Serve

  1. Transfer the steak to a serving dish and season with salt, pepper, and butter.

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. 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

Steak
Is the main protein, which browns on the outside and stays tender inside when cooked briefly.
Butter or suet
Adds fat for browning and a rich flavor, and helps keep the pan surface from sticking.

The step that matters

Sear both sides quickly in a very hot pan. A very hot pan browns the steak's surface through the Maillard reaction, building flavor. If the pan is not hot enough, the steak steams and turns grey, and it may stick. Moving it to a cooler spot then finishes the interior without burning the outside.

“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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