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Fried Beefsteak

A pan‑fried beef steak coated in flour and cooked with lard and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,677 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Beefsteak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pound the steak well.

  2. Roll the steak in flour.

Fry and simmer

  1. Heat the lard in a pan until very hot.

  2. Fry the steak in the hot lard until nicely browned.

  3. Add the boiling water and let it boil for 2-3 minutes.

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. Beef + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Beef and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,677 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

Beef steak
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender when pounded and then browned in fat.
Flour
Forms a coating that browns in the hot fat, giving the steak a crisp, golden crust.
Lard
Fat that conducts heat for frying, browning the steak and adding richness.
Boiling water
Adds liquid to the hot pan, loosening the browned bits and creating a simple sauce.

The step that matters

Frying in very hot lard. If the lard is not very hot when the floured steak goes in, the coating absorbs fat and steams rather than browning. A properly hot pan sears the surface quickly, which builds colour and flavour and keeps the steak from becoming greasy.

“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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