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Broiled Beef Steak

A steak cooked over coals or a broiler, seasoned with salt, pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Broiled Beef Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the steak

  1. Preheat your grill or broiler.

  2. Cook the steak over clear coals for 10 minutes for rare doneness.

Finish

  1. Transfer the steak to a warm dish.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and butter.

  3. Optionally, dredge the steak in salt and flour before cooking.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 thickness and heat exposure determine how done the meat becomes.
Butter
Adds richness, moisture, and a rounded flavor to the finished steak.
Flour
Dredging helps form a browned, slightly crisp surface on the steak.

The step that matters

Cooking the steak over clear coals for 10 minutes. Steak thickness and heat intensity both change how quickly the interior cooks. Too much time over high heat overcooks the centre, so the target rare doneness is easy to miss.

“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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