Why it works: Beef and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,847 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓
Boiled Beef Steaks
Ingredients
Directions
Preheat the grill until hot and rub the bars with suet.
Sprinkle a little salt over the fire.
Place the steaks on the grill and turn them often.
Keep a dish close to the fire to drain the gravy from the steaks.
Set the grill at a slant to prevent fat from falling onto the coals.
If smoke appears, remove the steak for a moment.
Cook the steaks over a brisk fire for about 10 minutes.
Serve the steaks on a hot plate with a small slice of butter on each and pour the gravy over them, adding a pinch of salt.
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.
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Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together10,847 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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