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Steak a LA Stanley

A steak served with a mustard sauce and fried bananas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Steak a LA Stanley

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the steak

  1. Broil the steak until cooked to your liking.

  2. Spread a thin layer of mustard on the cooked steak.

Make the sauce and bananas

  1. Split the bananas and fry them in butter until golden.

  2. In a saucepan, combine 1 tablespoon of butter and milk; heat until bubbling.

  3. Stir in the moistened cornstarch, salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

Serve

  1. Garnish the platter with fried bananas and pour the sauce over the steak.

  2. Serve hot.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Banana + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,470 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the base of the sauce, giving it body and a creamy texture.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as it heats and bubbles.
Bananas
Fried until golden, they add sweetness and a caramelized flavor to the platter.
Mustard
Spread on the steak, it adds a sharp, tangy bite that contrasts with the rich sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the moistened cornstarch into the boiling milk. Cornstarch must be fully mixed in while it is moistened and the milk is hot enough to bubble, so the starch swells and thickens the sauce. Adding it dry or unevenly can cause lumps and a thin, grainy sauce.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (banana, butter, milk, pepper, lemon):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, butter, milk, pepper, lemon. 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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