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Steak and Mushrooms

A steak served with sautéed canned mushrooms in a butter‑flour sauce.

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 ↓

Steak and Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the steak

  1. Broil the sirloin steak over a clear fire until cooked to your liking.

  2. Season the steak with salt and pepper, then keep it hot on a dish.

Make the sauce

  1. Open the can of mushrooms and cut each one in half.

  2. In a saucepan, mix 2 tablespoons of butter with 1 tablespoon of flour until smooth.

  3. Add ½ cup of boiling water.

  4. Season with a little salt and pepper.

  5. Heat the mushrooms in the saucepan until warmed through.

  6. Pour the sauce around the steak.

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 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).

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
Is the main protein, cooked by direct high heat to brown the surface and set its texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce and helps carry flavour.
Flour
Thickens the butter and water into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.
Mushrooms
Add savoury, earthy flavour and a soft texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Mixing the butter and flour until smooth. Flour must be fully blended with the melted butter before the water goes in. Lumps that are not dispersed will not hydrate evenly, leaving a grainy or pasty sauce.

“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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