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Beef, Broiled, with Mushrooms

Broiled slices of tinned roast beef served with sautéed preserved mushrooms in a lightly browned sauce.

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 ↓

Beef, Broiled, with Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mushroom sauce

  1. Slice the mushrooms.

  2. Fry the sliced mushrooms lightly in hot butter.

  3. Sprinkle flour over the mushrooms.

  4. Cook until the mixture is nicely browned.

  5. Add the stock or water.

  6. Season to taste.

  7. Stir until boiling.

  8. Simmer gently for about 30 minutes.

Broil and serve

  1. Slice the meat.

  2. Coat each slice lightly with oil or oiled butter.

  3. Broil the slices over or in front of a clear fire.

  4. Serve with a little sauce and all the mushrooms around the dish.

  5. Put the remainder of the sauce in a sauce boat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Roast beef
Forms the main body of the dish and is the protein served in slices.
Preserved mushrooms
Add savoury flavour and soft texture to the sauce and garnish the dish.
Butter
Fats the mushrooms as they fry, adding richness and helping them brown.
Flour
Browns with the mushroom fat and thickens the stock into a sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the flour until the mixture is nicely browned. Flour cooked in fat until browned develops a nutty flavour and colour, and stirring in liquid too early can leave lumps. Cook it fully before adding the stock so the sauce tastes rich and thickens smoothly.

“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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