Skip to main content
Main

Beefsteak, Fried

A pan‑fried rump steak served with butter or gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and butter 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 ↓

Beefsteak, Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the steak

  1. Heat enough butter or fat in a frying pan to barely cover the bottom.

  2. Add the steak and fry one side quickly.

  3. Turn the steak and fry the other side until browned.

  4. Cook more slowly, turning the steak repeatedly to avoid burning the fat.

Make the gravy

  1. Drain off the fat.

  2. Add boiling water to the sediment.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Boil, skim, and strain.

Serve

  1. Serve with a little butter spread on top or with gravy. Serve.

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 + buttertop 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

Rump steak
Main protein; searing browns its surface, and the juices and sediment left behind flavour the gravy.
Butter or frying fat
Conducts heat for frying and helps brown the steak's surface, adding richness.

The step that matters

Cook more slowly and turn the steak repeatedly. Once the initial sear is done, high heat can burn the fat and sediment, producing bitter flavours. Lower heat with frequent turning cooks the steak evenly without scorching the pan residue that becomes the gravy.

“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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes