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Porterhouse Steak

A 1‑inch thick porterhouse steak seasoned with pepper and cooked over a clear fire.

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 ↓

Porterhouse Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Brush both sides of the steak with warm butter or salad oil.

  2. Sprinkle with pepper and let it rest for 1 hour before cooking.

Cook and serve

  1. Grill over a clear fire until cooked to your liking.

  2. Serve with maitre d’ hotel butter, fried button onions, small stuffed tomatoes, horseradish sauce, or your choice of accompaniment.

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

Porterhouse steak
Provides the main meat, whose thickness lets the outside brown while the centre stays juicy.
Warm butter
Adds fat and flavour to the surface, helping it brown and keeping it from drying out.
Salad oil
Coats the surface with fat, promoting even browning and reducing sticking on the grill.

The step that matters

Grilling over a clear fire until cooked to your liking. Surface browning comes from high, direct heat, while the interior cooks more slowly. Without a clear, hot fire the outside may stay pale or the steak may overcook before browning. Checking doneness by eye or with a thermometer prevents a dry result.

“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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