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Mushrooms on Toast

Mushrooms sautéed with minced steak and butter, served over hot toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Mushrooms on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the meat juices

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan.

  2. Fry the minced steak in the butter, adding salt and cayenne.

  3. Pour in the hot water and cook until the juices are extracted from the meat.

  4. Tilt the pan and press the meat with the back of a spoon until only dry meat remains, then remove it.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the mushrooms to the liquid in the pan; if needed, add more butter.

  2. Toss the mushrooms briefly, then pour them over hot toast.

  3. Optionally, add a little sherry 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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Provide the main body of the topping and absorb the savoury meat juices.
Raw minced steak
Releases its juices into the pan, flavouring the liquid that coats the mushrooms.
Butter
Carries heat and adds richness, helping the meat brown and the mushrooms take on flavour.

The step that matters

Extracting the meat juices. Pressing the meat until only dry meat remains concentrates the juices in the liquid. Removing the dry meat keeps the sauce flavourful and prevents it from becoming gritty or overcooked.

“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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