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Broiled Steak

A steak grilled over coals, seasoned with butter, pepper, sea salt, and garnished with onion, parsley, and lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Broiled Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat and grease the bars of a grill.

  2. Prepare a bright fire with live coals.

  3. Trim the steak and cut off the tough end.

Cook the steak

  1. Lay the steak on the grill over the coals.

  2. Sear one side, then turn and sear the other side.

  3. Continue turning until cooked to your liking.

Serve

  1. Transfer to a hot platter.

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

  3. Rub a bit of onion over the platter for flavor.

  4. Garnish with parsley and lemon slices.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Porter-house steak
Provides the main meat, cooked by searing over live coals until done to taste.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the cooked steak when seasoned on the hot platter.
Onion
Rubbed over the hot platter to add a light aromatic flavor.

The step that matters

Sear one side, then turn and sear the other side. Searing over hot coals browns the surface and builds flavor, while turning promotes even cooking so the inside does not overcook before the outside is done.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, parsley, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, parsley, lemon. 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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