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Beoiled Beefsteak

Broiled beefsteak served with a mushroom and sherry sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Beoiled Beefsteak

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the steak

  1. Grease the bars of a grill with butter and place the steak on it over hot coals.

  2. Cook one side until done, then transfer the steak to a warmed platter with the cooked side down.

  3. Quickly return the steak to the grill to cook the other side to your liking.

  4. Spread lightly with butter and keep warm without letting it become oily.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a saucepan, boil ½ cup water until brown, then add 3 tablespoons beef stock, ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt, ¼ teaspoon nutmeg, and ⅓ cup sherry wine.

  2. Add the can of mushrooms and boil for 10 minutes.

  3. Pour the sauce over the steak and serve on hot plates.

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 + sherrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

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

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

  4. Mushroom + winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,632 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

  5. Mushroom + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,988 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Steak
Provides the main protein, which browns on the hot grill and firms as it cooks.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and sweetness to the sauce, deepening its flavour as it reduces.
Beef stock
Gives the sauce savoury depth and body.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and soften in the simmering sauce.

The step that matters

Keep the steak from becoming oily when buttering. Butter spread on hot meat melts quickly and can make the surface greasy, so only a light coating is needed to keep the steak warm and moist.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, mushroom, beef, sherry, wine):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, mushroom, beef, sherry, wine. 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.

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