Name: Steak Aux Legumes
Ingredients: 1 pound steak, cut thick; 2 small onions, sliced; 1 fried mushroom, minced; coarse sea salt, to taste; black pepper, to taste; 1 carrot, sliced; 1 turnip, sliced

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Steak Aux Legumes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the steak

Make a pocket in the steak by inserting a sharp knife and cutting it, leaving a small space at the edge.
Fry the onions until golden brown and mix with the minced mushroom, salt, and pepper.
Stuff the onion and mushroom mixture into the steak pocket, preserving its shape.

Cook and serve

Grill the steak over a clear fire for 5 to 7 minutes, turning carefully to catch the gravy.
Cut the carrot and turnip into continuous ribbon strips using a sharp knife.
Boil the carrot and turnip ribbons until tender.
Place the cooked steak on a hot dish, pour the gravy over it, and garnish with the carrot and turnip ribbons.

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.

Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,585 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,555 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21,601 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + turniptop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,252 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

Steak: Forms the main body of the dish and carries the stuffing and gravy.
Onions: Browning when fried adds sweetness and savoury depth to the stuffing.
Mushroom: Adds earthy, savoury aroma to the onion stuffing.
Carrot: Adds sweetness and colour, and softens to a tender texture when boiled.
Turnip: Adds mild sweetness and a tender texture when boiled.

The step that matters

Grilling the stuffed steak. Grilling over a clear, hot fire browns the surface through the Maillard reaction while keeping the interior juicy. Turning carefully keeps the stuffing sealed in and the juices in the pan.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, pepper, carrot, turnip):

Parsnipfits better
Spinachfits better
Leekfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, pepper, carrot, turnip. 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.

Carrot Soup134 recipes

Mushroom Soup60 recipes

Turnip Soup43 recipes

Tomato Soup526 recipes

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Steak Aux Legumes