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Broiled Steak

A thick cut steak seasoned with salt, pepper, and flour, broiled over hot coals and served with butter or optional sauces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,719 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Broiled Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim any excess fat from the steak.

  2. Dredge the steak with salt, pepper, and flour.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook the steak on a broiler over hot coals for 10 minutes for rare or 12 minutes for medium.

  2. Turn the steak frequently while cooking.

  3. Serve on a hot dish with butter and salt, or with your choice of sauce.

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. Mushroom + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

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

  4. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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
The main cut; its surface browns over high heat while the interior cooks to the chosen doneness.
Flour
Coats the surface so it browns more readily and forms a slightly crisp crust.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor as it melts over the hot steak when served.

The step that matters

Turn the steak frequently. Over hot coals the outside can char before the centre reaches the target doneness. Frequent turning spreads the heat evenly, browning the surface without burning it while the inside cooks through.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, flour, butter, mushroom, sauce):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, butter, mushroom, sauce. 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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