Name: Porterhouse Steak and Mushrooms
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons butter; 1 small onion, chopped; 1 pinch thyme; 2 tablespoons flour; 1 cup water; 3 tablespoons beef stock; a tiny bit of nutmeg; mushrooms, sliced

Why it works: Thyme and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,907 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Porterhouse Steak and Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

In a granite pan, melt the butter over medium heat.
Add the chopped onion and thyme, and sauté until the onion is translucent.
Stir in the flour slowly, removing from heat while mixing until slightly browned.
Add the water and let it simmer.
Stir in the beef stock and nutmeg.
Add the sliced mushrooms and cook for 15 minutes.
Pour the mushroom sauce over the cooked porterhouse steak and serve.

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.

Thyme + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,907 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,232 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Thyme + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,557 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,092 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,171 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the nutmeg

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

Marjoramfits better
Garlicfits better
Parsleyfits better
Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, thyme, flour, beef, mushroom. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.