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Fried Beef-Steaks

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

Fried Beef-Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat a frying pan and fry some fat until rendered.

  2. Wipe the pan and add the beef steaks.

  3. Dredge a little coarse sea salt over the steaks, being careful not to use too much.

  4. Cook the steaks to your desired doneness.

  5. Optionally, thicken a sauce in the pan with ketchup, oysters, mushrooms, or lemon pickle and pour over the steaks before serving.

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

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

  3. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Mushroom + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

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

  5. Ketchup + oystertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together318 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, ketchup, oyster, mushroom):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Grapefits about as well
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Red currantfits less well

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

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