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Sauce

Canned Mushrooms for Steaks

A sauce made from canned mushrooms, butter, veal gravy, white wine, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,765 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

Canned Mushrooms for Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Open the can and drain the liquid into a small saucepan.

  2. Reduce the liquid to one-fourth over medium heat.

  3. Slice the mushrooms and sauté them in butter for a few seconds.

  4. Add the reduced liquid, veal gravy, and white wine.

  5. Season with salt and cayenne pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve the mixture over 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. Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

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

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

  3. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + vealtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,446 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Provide the main body and earthy flavor of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and helps sauté the mushrooms, carrying flavor into the sauce.
Veal gravy
Gives the sauce its savory, meaty base and body.
White wine
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the rich gravy.

The step that matters

Reduce the mushroom liquid to one-fourth. Reducing concentrates the liquid's flavor and thickens it by evaporating water. Under-reducing leaves the sauce thin and watery once the gravy and wine are added.

“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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