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Grilled Beef on Toast

A grilled beef topping served on buttered toast with a savory sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Grilled Beef on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beef

  1. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a skillet over medium heat.

  2. Add slices of cold beef and heat through. If using scraps, chop coarsely first.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate bowl, mix 2 tablespoons hot water, 2 tablespoons butter, Worcestershire sauce, tomato ketchup, mustard, salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

  2. If desired, finely chop the onion, brown it in 1 tablespoon of butter, and add to the sauce.

  3. Thicken the sauce with 1 teaspoon of flour mixed with 1 teaspoon of butter.

Serve

  1. Place hot buttered toast on a platter, top with grilled beef, and pour the sauce over.

  2. Serve immediately while hot.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

  5. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main meaty substance that the sauce coats and is served over toast.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the beef and toast instead of running off.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and helping the beef brown lightly in the pan.
Tomato ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity, giving the sauce its tangy, rounded flavour.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savoury depth and a sharp, fermented note to the sauce.
Mustard
Adds sharpness and a pungent bite that balances the sweetness of the ketchup.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with flour and butter. Flour must be fully mixed with butter before it meets the liquid, otherwise it clumps. Cooking it briefly in the sauce swells the starch so the sauce thickens smoothly rather than staying thin or lumpy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, beef, sauce, tomato, ketchup, mustard, pepper):

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Mangofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, beef, sauce, tomato, ketchup, mustard, pepper. 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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