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Beefsteak and Mushrooms

A sauce of butter, onion, sage, thyme, flour, water, beef stock, salt, nutmeg, sherry wine, and canned mushrooms served over beefsteak.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,485 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Beefsteak and Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

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

  2. Add the chopped onion, sage, and thyme and sauté until the onion is soft.

  3. Stir in the flour and cook until the mixture turns brown.

  4. Add the water and bring to a boil, then simmer for 30 minutes.

  5. Stir in the beef stock, salt, nutmeg, and sherry wine.

  6. Add the mushrooms and boil for 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over a nicely broiled beefsteak.

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. Sage + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,485 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Sage + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together642 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Thyme + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and flavor while carrying the onion's aroma.
Flour
Thickens the sauce and, once cooked brown, adds a toasty, nutty flavor.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth that balances the rich, savory sauce.
Mushrooms
Contribute savory, earthy flavor and body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the flour until brown. Flour must cook long enough in the fat to lose its raw taste and develop color. Stopping early leaves a pasty, floury sauce, while cooking too long can scorch it and make it bitter.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sage, thyme, flour, beef, nutmeg, 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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