Name: Beefsteak with Mushrooms
Ingredients: 4 pounds sirloin steak, cut thin; black pepper, to taste; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 4 tablespoons butter; 1 quart mushrooms, stemmed and skinned; 1 pint water; black pepper, to taste; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; flour, for thickening

Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Beefsteak with Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown the steak

Season the steak with black pepper and a little salt.
Melt the butter in a frying pan over medium heat.
Once hot, add the steaks and brown them.

Make the mushrooms

Moisten the mushrooms with water.
Season the mushrooms with pepper and salt.
Thicken the mushrooms with flour.

Finish cooking

Pour the mushroom mixture over the steaks in the frying pan.
Cook until the steaks are thoroughly done.

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.

Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,580 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Mushroom + flourtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,253 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together50,459 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

Sirloin steak: Provides the meat that is browned and cooked through in the pan.
Butter: Fat for browning the steak and adding richness to the pan.
Mushrooms: Add earthy flavor and body to the sauce once thickened.
Flour: Thickens the mushroom liquid into a sauce.

“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.