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Porterhouse Steak

A thick porterhouse steak grilled and served with butter, onions, tomatoes, and horseradish sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,784 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Porterhouse Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Brush both sides of the steak with warm butter or salad oil.

  2. Sprinkle with pepper and let it rest for 1 hour before cooking.

Cook and serve

  1. Grill the steak over a clear fire until cooked to your liking.

  2. Serve with maitre d’hôtel butter, glazed button onions, stuffed tomatoes, and horseradish 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. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + horseradishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Porterhouse steak
Provides the main protein, cooked by direct fire to a browned exterior.
Butter or salad oil
Coats the surface with fat, aiding browning and carrying seasoning onto the meat.

The step that matters

Grilling the steak over a clear fire. A clear fire gives steady, intense heat without flare-ups from dripping fat. Cooking to your liking depends on watching the internal doneness rather than the clock, since a thick cut cooks unevenly.

Swap the horseradish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, onion, tomato, sauce):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, onion, tomato, sauce. 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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