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Beef Steak with Mushrooms

A steak cooked with mushrooms, butter, and a cream gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom 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 steak

  1. Season the steak with salt and pepper on both sides and let it rest for about ten minutes.

  2. Broil the steak in a very hot skillet without grease, turning often to prevent scorching.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Remove the steak to a hot platter and place butter on top.

  2. In a separate pan, heat the mushrooms cooked in their own liquor.

  3. Make a gravy by combining cream, flour, pepper, and salt, then pour it over the steak and serve.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mushroom + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,500 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Butter and flour 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

Sirloin steak
Provides the main protein; searing in a very hot pan browns the surface and builds flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and a glossy finish when placed on the hot steak.
Mushrooms
Add savory, earthy flavor and moisture to the dish.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the cream into a gravy as it is combined and heated.

The step that matters

Broiling the steak in a very hot skillet without grease. Without fat, the steak can scorch before it browns evenly. Frequent turning spreads heat and prevents the surface from burning while a browned crust forms through the Maillard reaction.

“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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