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Broiled Beefsteak with Mushroom Sauce

A broiled steak topped with a mushroom sauce made from sautéed mushrooms, butter, flour, lemon juice, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Broiled Beefsteak with Mushroom Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the steak

  1. Wipe the steak with a cloth dampened in cold water and trim off excess fat.

  2. Grease a wire broiler with the trimmed fat and fasten the steak inside.

Cook the steak

  1. Cook over red hot coals, turning every few seconds for 10-15 minutes, depending on your taste.

  2. Remove the steak to a hot platter and spread with butter, salt, and black pepper.

Make the mushroom sauce

  1. For the mushroom sauce, drain and rinse the mushrooms, then finely chop half of them.

  2. In a pan, cook the chopped mushrooms in ½ cup butter and lemon juice for about 3 minutes.

  3. Add the sifted flour to the butter in the pan and rub smooth.

  4. Gradually add the meat stock, cooking until the sauce reaches a cream-like consistency.

  5. Add the reserved mushrooms (cut into quarters) and cook together for 1-2 minutes.

  6. Season the sauce with salt and white pepper, then pour it around the steak.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Beefsteak (in the method)
Provides the main protein; cooking it quickly over intense heat keeps it tender and browned.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour in both the spread and the sauce.
Mushrooms
Contribute savoury, earthy flavour to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and stock into a smooth, cream-like sauce.
Meat stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding savoury depth.

The step that matters

Turning the steak over direct high heat. Frequent turning over red-hot coals browns the surface evenly while the interior cooks gently; leaving it still or overcooking it dries the meat and toughens it.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, mushroom, sauce, flour, lemon, meat. 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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