Skip to main content
Main

Beef Steak

A beef steak cooked on a hot gridiron, finished with a butter and salt pork sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Beef Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Pound the beef if not very tender.

  2. Wash the beef in cold water.

  3. Place the beef on a hot gridiron over coals and broil quickly for 15-20 minutes.

  4. Heat a platter until very hot, then lay the butter on it.

  5. Season the steak with salt and pepper on both sides.

Cook and make the gravy

  1. Broil a few slices of salt pork until brown, then remove them.

  2. Fry the beef in the same pan until brown on both sides.

  3. Remove the pan from heat and let the fat cool.

  4. Add ½ teacup of water to the cooled fat.

  5. Mix 2 teaspoons of flour with a little water and stir it into the fat.

  6. Return the pan to heat and stir until it boils, then pour it over the beef.

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. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Pepper + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

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

Beef
Forms the main substance of the dish, browned on the outside while staying juicy inside.
Butter
Melts on the hot platter to add richness and moisture to the served steak.
Salt pork
Renders fat into the pan that flavours the frying and the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the cooled pan fat and water into a smooth gravy as it boils.

The step that matters

Return the pan to heat and stir until it boils. Flour must be fully heated and stirred in the fat and liquid to thicken evenly; stopping early leaves a thin gravy, and unstirred flour clumps.

“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.

More beef steak recipes

Pie 87Pudding 24Broiled 20Stuffed 11Roast 10Stewed 9 See all 13 →

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes