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Beefsteak Smothered with Mushrooms

A beef steak baked with mushrooms, butter, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Beefsteak Smothered with Mushrooms

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Wash the mushrooms and remove the gills from the beef-steak mushrooms, then slice them.

Bake and serve

  1. Place all mushrooms in a baking pan, sprinkle with salt, add butter, and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes.

  2. Broil the steak until nearly done, then place it in the pan with the mushrooms, covering with the remaining mushrooms.

  3. Return to the oven for 10 minutes, then serve immediately.

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 + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  3. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Soften as they bake, releasing moisture that forms a savory juice in the pan.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavor and helps the mushrooms brown lightly as they bake.
Beef steak
Main protein; broiling first browns its surface before it finishes in the pan.

The step that matters

Broiling the steak until nearly done. Steak continues to cook from residual heat after leaving the broiler and again in the oven, so stopping short of the target doneness keeps it from turning dry and tough.

“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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