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Beef Steaks a LA Frangcaise

Beef steaks seasoned with salt and pepper, cooked over a brisk fire, served with a parsley‑cayenne butter and fried potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Beef Steaks a LA Frangcaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Season the beef slices with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  2. Brush the slices with a little clarified butter.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook the steaks over a clear, brisk fire until done.

  2. Mix minced parsley with a large slice of fresh butter, a little cayenne, and a small quantity of salt.

  3. Place the mixture in a serving dish and lay the cooked steaks on top.

  4. Garnish with fried potatoes arranged evenly around the meat.

  5. Squeeze the juice of half a lemon over the butter before serving.

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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sirloin beef
Forms the main protein; cooking over high heat browns its surface and sets its texture.
Clarified butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the beef brown evenly without burning.
Parsley
Adds fresh, herbal aroma to the butter sauce beneath the steaks.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and balances its flavour.

The step that matters

Cook the steaks over a clear, brisk fire until done. A hot, steady fire browns the surface quickly while the interior stays juicy. Thin slices overcook fast, so watching for doneness matters.

“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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