Skip to main content
Main

Steaks Ok Chops

A grilled steak seasoned with salt and pepper, served with mushroom ketchup, butter, horseradish, and optional shallot or pickles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Horseradish and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 376 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Steaks Ok Chops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the grill

  1. Preheat the grill until hot.

  2. Sprinkle a little salt onto the fire to ensure it burns clear.

  3. Clean the grill bars.

  4. Grease the grill bars.

  5. Season the steaks with pepper.

Cook the steaks

  1. Place the steaks on the grill.

  2. Turn the steaks often.

  3. Broil the steaks for 10 to 15 minutes, depending on your preferred doneness.

Serve

  1. Warm a dish with 1 teaspoon of mushroom ketchup for each pound of meat.

  2. Place each steak in the dish.

  3. Sprinkle with salt.

  4. Prick with a fork.

  5. Rub with butter.

  6. Serve the steaks in the gravy.

  7. Garnish with scraped horseradish.

  8. Add optional minced shallot or pickles.

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. Horseradish + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Horseradish + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Shallot + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Steaks
Provide the meat that is seared on the grill and then served in the sauce.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury umami depth and forms the gravy the steaks are served in.
Butter
Adds richness and a glossy finish when rubbed over the hot steaks.
Horseradish
Adds a sharp, pungent bite that cuts through the richness of the meat.

The step that matters

Turn the steaks often. Frequent turning on a hot grill lets heat reach the centre gradually, so the outside does not scorch before the interior cooks to the chosen doneness.

Swap the shallot

The recipe marks shallot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, mushroom, ketchup, meat, butter, horseradish, onion):

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Chivefits less well
  4. Capsicumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, mushroom, ketchup, meat, butter, horseradish, onion. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipesMince MeatMince Meat37 recipes