Why it works: Sauce and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓
Broiled Steak
Ingredients
Directions
Cook the steak
Preheat the grill.
Cook the steak for 8 minutes for under-done, 10 minutes for medium, or 12 minutes for well-done.
Remove the steak from the grill and let the fat drain for 1 minute.
Place the steak on a hot dish.
Finish and serve
Optionally, place a pat of fresh butter under and on top of the steak.
Mix the lemon juice and Harvey or Worcester sauce, heating it separately in a cup in the oven.
Spread Béarnaise sauce over the steak and serve immediately.
Serve fried potatoes or fried onions as a garnish.
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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Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together15,338 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,227 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
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Sauce + lemontop 30% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together6,598 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Butter + fried potatotop 40% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together0 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Sauce + fried potatotop 77% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together0 recipes
Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Steak
- Main protein; its cooking time sets the doneness from under-done to well-done.
- Bearnaise sauce
- Rich emulsified sauce adding fat and a tangy, herbal flavour to the meat.
- Fresh butter
- Adds fat and richness, keeping the surface of the steak moist and flavourful.
- Juice of ½ lemon
- Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and cuts the richness of the butter and sauce.
The step that matters
Remove the steak from the grill and let the fat drain for 1 minute. Resting briefly lets juices settle instead of pooling on the plate, and draining fat prevents the steak from becoming greasy. Timing the cook to the chosen doneness matters most, since the meat keeps cooking from residual heat after it leaves the grill.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, butter, fried potato):
- Coconutfits better
- Avocadofits better
- Grapefits about as well
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, butter, fried potato. 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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