Skip to main content
Main

Beefsteak with Dressing

A dish of small pieces of beefsteak coated in flour, breadcrumbs, and sage, baked until cooked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Beefsteak with Dressing

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a rather brisk oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Remove excess fat from the steak and cut it into small pieces, or use a small piece of suet.

  2. Heat the fat in a dripper.

  3. Dredge the steak with flour, coarse sea salt, and black pepper.

Dress and bake

  1. Cover the steak with a thick layer of bread crumbs seasoned with salt, pepper, and sage.

  2. Moisten the crumbs with the boiling water mixed with melted butter.

  3. Place the steak in a pan and bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 40 minutes, depending on the thickness of the steak.

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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sagetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + sagetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Sirloin steak
Provides the main meat, which cooks through in the oven under its crumb coating.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned crust over the steak and hold the seasoning and sage.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that helps the crumbs brown and flavour the dressing.
Flour
Dries the steak surface and helps the seasoning cling for a better sear.

The step that matters

Moistening the crumbs. Adding too much boiling water can make the crumb layer soggy rather than crisp. Moistening just enough lets the crumbs hold together and brown in the oven.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Sagethe original
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

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

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes