Name: Chateaubriand Steak with Mushrooms
Ingredients: 1 prime tenderloin steak; 12 fresh mushrooms; butter; coarse sea salt

Why it works: Mushroom and butter 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 ↓

Chateaubriand Steak with Mushrooms

Ingredients

1 prime tenderloin steak
12 fresh mushrooms
butter
coarse sea salt

Directions

Prepare

Trim the tenderloin steak into shape and season with coarse sea salt.
While the steak is broiling, peel and trim the mushrooms.

Cook

Broil the steak according to your preferred method for beefsteak.
Broil the mushrooms until cooked through.

Serve

Serve the steak on a hot dish, generously buttered, and top with the broiled mushrooms.

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.

Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tenderloin steak: Is the main cut of meat, tender and mild, carrying the dish's flavour.
Mushrooms: Add earthy, savoury flavour and moisture that complements the beef when broiled.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, coating the hot steak and giving a silky finish.

“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.