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Broiled Steak, with Bordelaise Sauce

A broiled round steak served with a tomato and onion Bordelaise sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Broiled Steak, with Bordelaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the steak

  1. Preheat the broiler over hot coals or a very hot stove.

  2. Beat the round steak until tender and place it on the broiler.

  3. Cook until brown on one side, then turn and cook the other side until done.

  4. Transfer the steak to a hot platter and spread with hot melted butter, then sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, chop the onion finely and fry in butter until light brown.

  2. Mash the tomatoes through a sieve and add to the onions.

  3. When boiling, stir in chopped garlic, salt, and pepper.

  4. Cook for 15 minutes and serve over the steak or separately.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Round steak
Is the main protein; beating it breaks up fibers so it becomes more tender.
Butter
Adds richness and a glossy coating to the steak, and browns the onions for the sauce.
Onion
Fried until light brown, it adds sweetness and savory depth to the sauce.
Ripe tomatoes
Mashed into a sieved pulp, they form the body and bright acidity of the sauce.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that mellows as the sauce cooks.

The step that matters

Cook the steak until brown on one side, then turn. Searing under intense heat browns the surface through the Maillard reaction, building flavor. Turning only once and cooking to doneness keeps the interior from overcooking while the outside stays browned.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, onion, tomato, garlic):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, onion, tomato, garlic. 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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