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Beef En Miroton

A sauce of butter, onions, flour, broth, wine, vinegar, mustard served over sliced beef.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef En Miroton

Ingredients

Directions

Make the onion base

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and sauté the chopped onions until cooked.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the flour mixed with broth and white wine. Cook until thickened.

  2. Stir in the meat, season with salt, pepper, and vinegar. Bring to a boil.

  3. Mix in the made mustard.

Serve

  1. Serve the meat slices overlapping on a dish.

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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Onions
Cooked down in butter until soft, they add sweetness and body to the sauce.
Butter
Carries the onions' cooking and adds richness and fat to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the broth and wine into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Broth
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that the flour thickens.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the sauce.
Made mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that balances the richness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the flour mixture until thickened. Flour must be fully cooked in the liquid for its starch to swell and thicken the sauce; stopping early leaves a thin sauce with a raw, pasty taste.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, flour, white wine, beef, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, flour, white wine, beef, pepper, vinegar. 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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