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Beefsteak with Wine Sauce

A beef steak seasoned with lemon, cooked in butter, and finished with a wine sauce of consommé and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sherry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,505 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Beefsteak with Wine Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Rub the steak with lemon juice.

  2. Melt butter in a skillet and broil the steak.

  3. When the steak is half done (about 5 minutes), pour over the consommé and sherry.

  4. Cook for an additional 6 to 8 minutes, turning the steak several times.

  5. Before serving, add the juice of a lemon.

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. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Lemon + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Beef + lemontop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,278 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef steak
Forms the main body of the dish and is the protein that cooks through under heat.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the steak brown in the skillet.
Consommé
Adds savory liquid that moistens the steak and builds the sauce base.
Sherry
Adds aromatic, slightly sweet depth to the wine sauce as it reduces with the consommé.

The step that matters

Adding the consommé and sherry at the halfway point. Liquid poured onto a hot skillet can cool the pan and stop browning, so the steak should be well seared first. Turning it while cooking helps it cook evenly and keeps the sauce from scorching.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, sherry):

  1. Applefits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Grapefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, sherry. 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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