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Sat Salt Beef Steak Sirloin

A beef sirloin steak seasoned with salt, pepper, parsley butter, and lemon juice, cooked in a chafing dish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Sat Salt Beef Steak Sirloin

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place an earthen cocotte over moderate heat.

  2. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in the cocotte.

  3. Season the steak with ¼ teaspoon of coarse sea salt and ½ teaspoon of black pepper on each side.

  4. Cook the steak for 12 minutes on each side without covering.

  5. Avoid pricking the meat to retain its juices.

  6. After 24 minutes, turn off the heat and spread the parsley butter mixture over the steak.

  7. Serve directly in the cocotte.

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

Beef sirloin
Provides the main meat, which browns on the outside while staying juicy inside when not pricked.
Butter
Conducts heat into the pan and adds richness and browning to the steak surface.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the meat and draws out surface moisture to help it brown.

The step that matters

Avoid pricking the meat. Piercing the steak lets juices escape, which leaves the meat drier and less flavorful. Turning it with tongs keeps the juices inside.

“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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