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Mushroom Sauce for Beefsteak

A quick mushroom sauce made with canned mushrooms, butter, stock, ketchup, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,719 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Mushroom Sauce for Beefsteak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. If the mushrooms are large, cut them into smaller pieces.

  2. In a skillet, melt the butter and fry the mushrooms until light brown.

Simmer and serve

  1. Add the soup stock (or hot water) and tomato ketchup.

  2. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  3. Thicken the sauce slightly with flour.

  4. Bring to a boil 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.

  1. Mushroom + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  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 savory flavor of the sauce as they brown in butter.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the mushrooms brown in the pan.
Soup stock or hot water
Forms the liquid base that the sauce is built on.
Tomato ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity along with a tomato flavor to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a sauce with a smoother body.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce slightly with flour. Flour must be cooked in liquid to lose its raw taste and to thicken evenly; adding it dry or in clumps causes lumps and a floury flavor. Stirring it into the liquid and bringing it to a boil lets the starch gelatinize and thicken the sauce.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, ketchup, pepper, flour. 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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