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Beefsteak Ajstd Musheooms

A pan‑sautéed beefsteak served with a mushroom sauce made from onions, herbs, flour, stock, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 Ajstd Musheooms

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 fragrant.

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

  4. Add the water, 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.

Cook and serve the steak

  1. Broil the beefsteak on a greased gridiron over hot coals until cooked to your liking.

  2. Place the steak on a warmed platter, cooked side down, to collect juices.

  3. Return the steak to the gridiron to cook the other side.

  4. Once done, spread lightly with butter and keep warm before serving on hot plates.

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

Flour
Browned with the butter and onion, it thickens the sauce and adds a nutty flavour.
Mushrooms
Simmered in the sauce, they add earthy flavour and a soft, tender texture.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the sauce as it simmers.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and flavour, and finishes the steak with richness.
Beefsteak
The main protein, cooked over direct heat to develop browning and flavour.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Cooking the flour in butter until it turns brown develops nutty flavour and colour, and removes its raw taste. Stop before it burns, since scorched flour turns bitter and the sauce will taste harsh.

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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