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Gravy for Steaks and Chops

A mushroom gravy made with butter, flour, Worcestershire sauce, pepper, and salt, served over steaks or chops.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Gravy for Steaks and Chops

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Brown the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook until golden.

  3. Add pepper, salt, Worcestershire sauce, and mushrooms.

  4. Cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Serve

  1. Pour the gravy over the roast before serving.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + saucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 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

Butter
Adds fat and rich flavor, and browning it deepens the gravy's nutty taste.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks with the butter.
Mushrooms
Add savory, earthy flavor and body to the gravy.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savory depth and a tangy, umami note.

The step that matters

Cook the flour until golden. Cooking flour in the fat until golden removes its raw taste and thickens the gravy more evenly. Undercooked flour leaves a pasty flavor, while overcooked flour loses thickening power.

“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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