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French Beefsteak

A grilled fillet steak seasoned with pepper, salt, butter, parsley, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

French Beefsteak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the steaks

  1. Cut the steaks to a thickness of 1 inch from the fillet of beef.

  2. Season the steaks with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Dip the steaks into melted fresh butter.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the steaks on a buttered grill and broil over hot coals.

  2. Chop parsley and mix with butter.

  3. Place the mixture in the center of the serving dish.

  4. Arrange the steaks around the butter and parsley mixture.

  5. Serve with a squeeze of lemon over the steaks.

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

Fillet of beef
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked by broiling over hot coals.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and moisture to the steaks and carries the parsley flavour.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich beef and butter.

The step that matters

Broil over hot coals. Intense direct heat browns the surface quickly, building flavour while keeping the inside tender. Too little heat or too long a cook dries out the steak, so watch the grill closely.

“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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