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Frying Meat

A dish of fried steaks served with a mushroom ketchup sauce and onions.

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

Fry the steaks

  1. Heat dripping in a frying pan.

  2. Fry the steaks until done and place them in a hot dish.

  3. Pour off the fat from the frying pan.

Make the mushroom sauce

  1. Dredge the pan with flour and cook until slightly brown.

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

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

Serve

  1. Serve hot, with onions either in the dish or around the steak.

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. Walnut + mushroomtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together763 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Steaks
The main protein, fried until done and served in the sauce.
Flour
Dredged into the pan fat and browned, it thickens the sauce.
Butter
Melts into the pan juices, adding richness and flavour to the sauce.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami flavour to the sauce.
Onions
Served alongside the steaks, adding sweetness and flavour.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in the fat. Cooking the flour in the fat until slightly brown develops a nutty flavour and colour, and removes the raw starch taste before liquid is added. Stop before it darkens too far, or the sauce will taste bitter.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Sesamefits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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