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Mushrooms with Steak

A buttery mushroom sauce served over steak.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Mushrooms with Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mushroom sauce

  1. In a skillet, melt the butter and cook the diced mushrooms until tender. Remove the mushrooms.

  2. In the same butter, brown the onion slices, then remove them.

  3. Add the lemon juice to the butter.

  4. Stir in the flour and cook until smooth and free of lumps.

  5. Gradually add the hot beef stock, stirring until smooth.

  6. Add the cooked mushrooms and the fresh uncooked mushrooms. Simmer until the mushrooms are tender.

Serve

  1. Serve the mushroom mixture with 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. Mushroom + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Mushrooms
Provide the main body and earthy flavor of the sauce as they soften and release liquid.
Butter
Carries the cooking and adds richness and fat to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, lump-free sauce.
Beef stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and adds savory meaty flavor.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and stock.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour and cook until smooth and free of lumps. Flour must be cooked in the butter before liquid is added, so its starch can swell evenly and thicken the sauce without clumping.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, butter, onion, flour, beef):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, onion, flour, beef. 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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