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Grilled or Fried Steak

A steak cooked on a grill or in a pan, served with butter and parsley or horseradish sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Grilled or Fried Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wrap the steak in two papaya leaves.

  2. Beat the wrapped steak gently for a couple of hours.

Grill

  1. Place the steak on a buttered grill over a low fire.

  2. Turn the steak frequently with tongs.

  3. Add more butter if needed.

  4. Cook the steak until there is a red streak in the center.

Serve

  1. Transfer the steak to a hot dish.

  2. Pour fat over the steak.

  3. Add a little butter and chopped parsley or horseradish sauce.

Fry and make the sauce

  1. Heat butter in a frying pan.

  2. Add the steak to the pan.

  3. Cook the steak until done.

  4. Lift the steak, then sprinkle the steak with flour, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  5. Add a dab of butter and a little water to thicken the 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Rump steak
Forms the main meat; its proteins firm and brown as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat for browning and richer flavor, and enriches the pan sauce.
Flour
Coats the surface to help it brown and thickens the pan sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the steak until there is a red streak in the center. Meat keeps cooking after it leaves the heat, so pulling it while a little red remains helps prevent it from drying out and toughening.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Potatothe original

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