[13] Bartolomeo Calderoni, the head chef of Quaglino's restaurant in Mayfair in the 1930s, was reported in 1955 to have popularised "the then rarely encountered Steak Diane, which he used personally to cook for the Duke of Windsor, then the Prince of Wales [until 1936],[14] with whom the dish was a great favourite".

[15][16] According to a 1957 article, Lord Louis Mountbatten was a regular diner at the Café de Paris in London in the 1930s and "nearly always had the same dinner – a dozen and a half oysters and steak Diane".

[24] Later in the 1940s, steak Diane featured frequently on the menus of restaurants popular with New York café society, perhaps as part of the fad for tableside-flambéed dishes.

Schiavon was said in 1968 to have created the dish with Luigi Quaglino at the Plage Restaurant in Ostend, Belgium, and named it after a "beauty of the nineteen-twenties"[28] or perhaps "a reigning lady of the European demimonde in the nineteen twenties".

[32] The steak is cut or pounded thin so that it will cook rapidly, sautéed in the seasoned butter and Worcestershire sauce, and served garnished with the parsley.

Later American versions were more elaborate: the three New York City recipes from 1953 add some or all of brandy, sherry, chives, dry mustard, and lemon juice.