Name: Beefsteak Smothered with Mushrooms
Ingredients: 12 good-sized mushrooms; 6 good-sized beefsteak mushrooms; ½ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 1 tablespoon butter; 1 beefsteak

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 ↓

Beefsteak Smothered with Mushrooms

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the mushrooms

Wash the mushrooms.
Remove the gills from the beefsteak mushrooms.
Slice the mushrooms.
Place all mushrooms in a baking pan.
Sprinkle the mushrooms with salt.
Add butter to the mushrooms.

Bake and serve

Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes.
Broil the beefsteak until nearly done.
Place the nearly done beefsteak in the pan with the mushrooms.
Cover the beefsteak with some mushrooms.
Return the pan to the oven for 10 minutes.
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.

Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beefsteak mushrooms: Their meaty texture and rich flavour form the main body of the dish.
Mushrooms: Release moisture as they cook, which gently steams and softens the dish.
Butter: Adds fat for richness and helps the mushrooms brown slightly in the pan.
Beefsteak: Provides the main meat element, cooked first under the broiler for browning.

“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.