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Excellent Beefsteak

A steak cooked in butter and finished with a cream and egg yolk gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Excellent Beefsteak

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the steak

  1. Heat a chafing dish until very hot.

  2. Place the steak in the hot dish and cover tightly.

  3. Turn the steak every half minute, keeping it covered as little as possible.

  4. When nearly done, sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Transfer to hot plates and top with a piece of butter.

  2. For gravy, add cream to the remaining juice in the dish, let it boil, and stir in the beaten egg yolk.

  3. Pour the gravy over the steak and serve.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Pepper and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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

Porterhouse steak
Provides the main meat, which browns on the outside while staying juicy inside.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky finish to the steak and its juices.
Rich sweet cream
Forms the base of the gravy, adding richness and a smooth body when boiled.
Egg yolk
Thickens the boiled cream into a smooth, lightly set gravy.

The step that matters

Stir the egg yolk into the boiling cream. Egg yolk thickens when heated gently, but if the cream is boiling hard or the yolk is added without stirring, it can curdle or turn grainy instead of smooth.

“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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