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Grilled Beef on Toast

A sandwich of grilled beef slices on buttered toast topped 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

Prepare the beef

  1. Melt butter in a skillet over medium heat.

  2. Add slices of cold beef and heat through.

  3. If using scraps, chop coarsely and heat.

Make the sauce

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

  2. If desired, finely chop onion and brown it in a tablespoon of butter.

  3. Add onion to the sauce.

  4. Thicken the sauce with flour mixed with water.

Serve

  1. Place hot buttered toast on a platter.

  2. Top with grilled beef.

  3. Pour sauce over.

  4. 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 meat, heated through so it becomes tender and warm on the toast.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it is cooked, giving it body so it clings to the beef and toast.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savory, tangy depth to the sauce.
Tomato ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity, rounding out the sauce's flavor.
Mustard
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the butter and beef.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor through the sauce and toast.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with flour mixed with water. Flour must be mixed smoothly with cold water first, then stirred into the hot sauce. Added dry or in lumps, it forms clumps that stay raw-tasting and do not thicken evenly.

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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