Skip to main content
Main

Prying Meat

A steak dish with a mushroom ketchup sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Prying Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat a vegetable dish with a strainer to drain off fat.

Cook the onions and steaks

  1. Fry the onions in dripping until softened, then transfer to the vegetable dish.

  2. Fry the steaks in more dripping until cooked, then place in a hot dish.

Make the sauce

  1. Pour off excess fat from the frying pan, then dredge with flour.

  2. Once the flour is slightly browned, add the butter and water, followed by mushroom ketchup and pepper.

  3. Mix well, ensuring the flour is dissolved, and bring to a boil.

  4. Strain the sauce into the dish with the steaks and serve hot, with onions either in the dish or arranged 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
Are the main protein, cooked by frying in dripping until done.
Flour
Browns in the fat and thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as it dissolves.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami flavour to the sauce.
Onions
Softened in dripping, they add sweetness and savoury depth to the dish.

The step that matters

Dissolving the flour into the liquid. If the flour is not fully dissolved before the sauce boils, it can stay in lumps. Mixing well while adding the water helps the starch disperse evenly, so the sauce thickens smoothly as it heats.

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.

You might also like

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes