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Steaks or Chops

Grilled steak or chop served with mushroom ketchup, butter, horseradish, and optional shallot and pickles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 or Chops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fire

  1. Preheat the grill until hot.

  2. Season the steaks or chops with pepper and sprinkle a little salt onto the fire to ensure it burns clear.

Grill and serve

  1. Clean and grease the grill bars, then place the steaks on the grill, turning them often.

  2. Broil for 10 to 15 minutes, depending on desired doneness.

  3. As the steaks cook, warm a dish with 1 teaspoon of mushroom ketchup for each pound of meat.

  4. Once cooked, place each steak in the dish, sprinkle with salt, prick with a fork, and rub with butter.

  5. Serve the steaks in the gravy, garnished with scraped horseradish and optionally with minced shallot and 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 or chops
Provide the main meat, which browns and firms on the hot grill.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds deep savoury umami flavour and forms the warm gravy the steaks are served in.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture when rubbed over the cooked steaks.
Scraped horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent heat that cuts through the richness of the meat.

The step that matters

Clean and grease the grill bars before placing the steaks. Clean, oiled bars keep meat from sticking and tearing, and help create an even browned crust. Turning the steaks often promotes even cooking and prevents the surface from charring before the interior is done.

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.

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