Skip to main content
Main

Baked Beefsteak

A baked beefsteak seasoned with salt, pepper, butter, and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Beefsteak

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Score the steak well.

  2. If the steak is small, place it in a pie pan.

  3. Add bits of butter if the steak is not very fat.

  4. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  5. Grate bread crumbs over the steak.

  6. Add a little water to the pan to prevent sticking.

Bake

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes, or longer if you prefer it well done.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  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

Beefsteak
Provides the main protein, cooking to a firmness set by the baking time.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture to a lean steak, helping it stay tender and browned.
Bread crumbs
Form a crust on the surface that helps hold in juices and adds light browning.

The step that matters

Add a little water to the pan to prevent sticking. Without a little liquid in the pan, the bread crumbs and meat juices can scorch and stick to the pan. A small amount of water keeps the surface from burning while the steak cooks.

“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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes