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Frying Meat

A steak cooked with onions and a mushroom ketchup gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Frying Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat a frying pan and cook the onions until softened, then transfer them to a hot serving dish to drain off excess fat.

  2. Fry the steaks in the same pan until cooked to your liking, then place them in a hot dish.

Make the sauce

  1. Pour off the fat from the frying pan, sprinkle flour into the pan, and cook until slightly browned.

  2. Add the butter and water to the pan, along with the mushroom ketchup and pepper. Mix well.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil, then strain it through a sieve into the dish with the steaks.

Serve

  1. Serve everything hot, with the onions either in the dish or arranged around 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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Steaks
Provide the main protein, which browns in the pan and forms the centrepiece of the dish.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, adding savoury depth to the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour into the sauce and giving it a smooth body.
Flour
Browned in the pan fat, it thickens the sauce as the liquid is added.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Flour cooked in the fat must brown slightly and be stirred constantly; if it is left too pale or allowed to scorch, the sauce tastes raw or bitter and its thickening power is uneven.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, mushroom, ketchup, pepper, 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.

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