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Mock Beefsteak

A veal steak seasoned with coarse sea salt, cooked in browned salt pork fat, served with butter and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Veal and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,930 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Mock Beefsteak

Ingredients

Directions

Cure

  1. Sprinkle coarse sea salt over the leg of veal and let it sit for a week.

Cook and serve

  1. Cut steaks from the veal.

  2. Fry the steaks in the fat from the browned salt pork or broil them.

  3. Serve with butter and pepper; no additional salt is needed.

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. Veal + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  2. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  4. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

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

  5. 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

Veal
Forms the steaks; its lean meat is cooked to a tender, browned surface.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the veal during the week-long cure.
Salt pork fat
Adds savory fat for frying, helping the steaks brown in the pan.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky finish to the cooked steaks.

The step that matters

Salting the leg for a week. Salt slowly penetrates the meat and changes its protein structure, so the cure must run its full time to season evenly and firm the texture. Too short a cure leaves the steaks unevenly seasoned and less tender.

“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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