Name: Beef, Lumber, in Madeira Sauce
Ingredients: 3 pounds beef; 1 cup brown stock or broth; 2 tablespoons butter; 2 tablespoons flour; ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; ¼ teaspoon black pepper; ⅓ cup Madeira wine; Mushrooms or truffles (optional)

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, Lumber, in Madeira Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Roast the beef

Roast the beef for 30 minutes.

Make the Madeira sauce

In a saucepan, combine the brown stock, butter, flour, cayenne, salt, and black pepper.
Add the Madeira wine and stir to combine.

Finish and simmer

Place the half-cooked beef in a stewpan with the sauce.
Simmer for another 30 minutes, but do not boil.
Add mushrooms or truffles for extra flavor, if desired.

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.

Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,232 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

Beef: Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender during slow cooking in the sauce.
Brown stock or broth: Provides the liquid base and savory depth for the sauce.
Butter: Adds richness and carries flavor into the sauce.
Flour: Thickens the sauce so it clings to the beef.
Madeira wine: Adds sweetness and a rich, aromatic note that deepens the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer without boiling. Boiling the sauce can toughen the meat and cause the flour-thickened sauce to break or become uneven. A gentle simmer keeps the beef tender and the sauce smooth.

“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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Beef, Lumber, in Madeira Sauce