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Beef Steak with Mushrooms

A sirloin steak served with mushrooms cooked in butter.

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 ↓

Beef Steak with Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Clean and wash the mushrooms with several rinses.

  2. Put the mushrooms in a stew pan with just enough water to adhere to them.

Cook the mushrooms

  1. Season the mushrooms with salt and pepper, then lightly stir in the flour.

  2. When the mushrooms are half done, add the butter.

Cook the steak and serve

  1. Broil the sirloin steak, season with salt and pepper, and baste with butter.

  2. Place the steak on a heated dish and pour the mushrooms over it. Serve hot.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mushroom + flourtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Form the bulk of the dish and release moisture and savory flavor as they cook.
Flour
Lightly stirred in to thicken the juices around the mushrooms.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor, and helps the mushrooms brown and the steak baste.
Sirloin steak
Serves as the main protein, browned under the broiler for savory flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the flour to the mushrooms. Flour must be stirred in evenly and lightly so it coats the mushrooms and thickens their juices without forming lumps. Adding it too early or stirring unevenly can leave clumps or a pasty texture.

“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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