Name: Dressed Beef Steaks
Ingredients: thin steaks from a rump; pepper; coarse sea salt; finely minced onions; butter; flour; gravy or water; 1 minced onion; mushroom ketchup

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 ↓

Dressed Beef Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Cut thin steaks longer than they are broad from a rump.
Beat the steaks with a rolling pin.
Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and finely minced onions.
Roll and tie the steaks with thread, cutting them even at the ends.
Fry the steaks brown in a little butter.
Make a sauce by browning a piece of butter with flour, then add gravy or water, a minced onion, pepper, and salt.
Boil the sauce, then add the steaks and let them stew for an hour.
Before serving, add some mushroom ketchup and remove the threads.

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.

Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,626 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

Swap the onion

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

Shallotfits better
Capsicumfits better
Chivefits better
Onionthe original

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