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Sauce for Steaks, or Chops, Cutlets, Etc.

A sauce made from pan fat, flour, boiling water, catsup, and optional onion, wine, and garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,784 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sauce for Steaks, or Chops, Cutlets, Etc.

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Remove the meat from the frying pan.

  2. Keep 1 tablespoon of fat in the pan or add 1 ounce of butter.

  3. Add enough flour to make a paste.

  4. Cook over heat until slightly browned.

  5. Gradually add boiling water until the mixture is the thickness of good cream.

  6. Stir in 1 tablespoon of mushroom catsup, walnut catsup, pickle, or browning.

  7. Let it boil for a few minutes.

  8. Optionally, add a sliced onion or minced shallot.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the sauce over the meat.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of port wine or shallot wine before serving.

  3. Garnish with finely scraped horseradish or pickled walnuts, gherkins.

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. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  4. Flour + horseradishtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together743 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mushroom + port winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together570 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms a paste with the fat that thickens the sauce as it is diluted with water.
Fat from the frying pan
Carries the flour and browns it, adding roasted flavour to the base.
Boiling water
Liquid that hydrates the flour paste and sets the sauce to the desired thickness.
Mushroom catsup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling water. Adding water too fast or all at once can leave lumps in the flour paste. Adding it gradually while stirring lets the starch hydrate evenly, giving a smooth sauce at the intended thickness.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, butter, flour, mushroom, port wine, horseradish):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, flour, mushroom, port wine, horseradish. 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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