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Beef Steaks a LA Francaise

Beef steaks seasoned with salt, pepper, and clarified butter, served with parsley butter and fried potatoes, finished with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Beef Steaks a LA Francaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and season

  1. Remove the skin from the sirloin and cut it into quarter-inch round slices. If unavailable, use part of the rump.

  2. Season the steaks with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Brush the steaks with clarified butter.

Broil and serve

  1. Broil the steaks over a clear, brisk fire until done.

  2. Mix minced parsley with a slice of fresh butter, a pinch of cayenne, and a small amount of salt.

  3. Squeeze the juice of half a lemon over the butter before adding the meat.

  4. Place the mixture in a serving dish, lay the steaks on top, and garnish with fried potatoes.

  5. Slice the potatoes thinly, fry until golden brown, and arrange them around the meat.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Sirloin or rump steak
Forms the main body of the dish and browns on the surface during broiling.
Clarified butter
Adds richness and helps the steak brown evenly under high heat.
Lemon
Its acidity brightens the butter and cuts through the richness of the beef.
Parsley
Adds a fresh, herbal aroma to the seasoned butter.

The step that matters

Broiling over a brisk fire until done. Thin slices cook very quickly over high heat, so they can go from done to overcooked in moments. Watching closely keeps the inside juicy while the outside browns.

“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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