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Beef Steaks

Beef steaks grilled and broiled with onion, mushroom ketchup, and horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and mushroom 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 ↓

Beef Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the beef into steaks ½ inch thick.

  2. Beat the steaks lightly.

  3. Prepare a grill by rubbing the bars with a cloth dipped in lard.

  4. Place the grill over hot coals.

  5. Do not add salt until serving.

Cook

  1. Broil the steaks quickly. Turn the steaks frequently.

Serve

  1. Heat a dish until very hot.

  2. Add onion slices to the dish.

  3. Lay the steaks in the dish.

  4. Sprinkle a little salt over the steaks.

  5. Pour a spoonful of boiling water over the steaks.

  6. Pour a spoonful of boiling mushroom ketchup over the steaks.

  7. Garnish the steaks with scraped horseradish.

  8. Cover the dish with a hot dish cover.

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. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

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

  2. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  4. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  5. Ketchup + horseradishtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together223 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

Beef ribs
Provides the meat for the steaks, which sears and browns over the hot coals.
Lard
Greases the grill bars so the steaks do not stick and gain a little richness.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury, salty depth to the juices poured over the hot steaks.

The step that matters

Broil the steaks quickly and turn them frequently. Fast, high heat browns the outside while the inside stays juicy. Frequent turning keeps the surfaces from scorching before the centre is cooked.

Swap the horseradish

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

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