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Mushrooms for Beefsteak

A creamy mushroom sauce served over steak.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Mushrooms for Beefsteak

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Cook mushrooms in their own liquid with 1 tablespoon butter, pepper, and salt for about 10 minutes.

  2. Melt 1 tablespoon butter in a saucepan and add 1 tablespoon flour; brown nicely.

  3. Stir in ½ cup beef stock and the mushroom juice.

  4. Add ½ cup heavy cream and bring to a boil.

  5. Season with pepper, salt, and a little Worcestershire sauce.

Serve

  1. Serve hot around a hot steak and garnish with parsley.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Mushroom + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 of flavour and their cooking liquid adds savoury depth to the sauce.
Butter
Carries flavour and, with the flour, forms the base that thickens the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter and browned, giving it body.
Beef stock
Adds savoury meaty liquid that forms the body of the sauce.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Brown the butter and flour. Cooking flour in butter until nicely browned removes raw starch taste and builds a nutty flavour. Adding liquid to a roux that is too pale or too dark changes the sauce's colour and flavour, and stirring prevents lumps.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, flour, beef, cream, pepper, sauce. 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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