Skip to main content
Main

Beef Steaks and Onions

Beef steaks cooked with onions and mushroom ketchup sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and mushroom 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 ↓

Beef Steaks and Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the steaks

  1. Heat ½ pound of butter in a pan over medium heat.

  2. Season the beef steaks with pepper and salt, then fry them until cooked.

  3. Add the sliced onions to the pan and fry until they are nicely browned.

  4. Place the cooked steaks on a serving dish and top with the fried onions.

Make the sauce

  1. In the same pan, add mushroom ketchup and a dusting of flour to the remaining juices.

  2. Let it boil for about one minute, then pour the sauce over the steaks.

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. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

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

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef steaks
Forms the main body of the dish and is cooked through by frying.
Butter
Conducts heat for frying and adds richness and flavour to the pan.
Onions
Browning in the hot fat builds sweetness and savoury depth.
Flour
Dusted into the pan juices, it thickens the sauce as it boils.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury, umami depth to the pan juices that form the sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling the sauce after adding flour. Flour must be cooked in the hot juices for the sauce to thicken smoothly. Adding it without enough heat or stirring can leave lumps or a raw, floury taste.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, beef, pepper, mushroom, ketchup, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, beef, pepper, mushroom, ketchup, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes