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Fried Beefsteaks

Fried beefsteaks cooked with their own fat, seasoned with pepper and salt, served with a gravy of boiling water or catsup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Fried Beefsteaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut some fat from the steak and place it in a frying pan over medium heat.

  2. If the steaks are not tender, beat them with a rolling pin.

Cook the steak

  1. Once the fat is boiling hot, add the steak to the pan and cover it.

  2. Fry briskly until one side is done, then sprinkle with pepper and salt.

  3. Turn the steak and cook to your desired doneness.

  4. Transfer the steak to a hot dish.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Add ⅓ cup boiling water or catsup to the pan to make gravy.

  2. Let it boil once, then pour it over the steak.

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 + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 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 steak
Is the main cooked protein, browned in hot fat and served as the centerpiece.
Fat from the steak
Fries the steak and browns its surface, adding rich flavor.
⅓ cup boiling water or catsup
Lifts the browned bits from the pan to form a simple pan gravy.

The step that matters

Frying the steak briskly in very hot fat. Fat must be boiling hot before the steak goes in. Searing at high heat browns the surface quickly and keeps the inside juicier, while a cool pan would steam and toughen it.

“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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