Skip to main content
Main

Beefsteak Sauce

A savory sauce made with onion, parsley, meat glaze, butter, sherry, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Beefsteak Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the aromatics

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped onion and parsley, and sauté until the onion is translucent.

Finish the sauce

  1. Stir in the meat glaze, sherry, and lemon juice.

  2. Simmer for a few minutes until the sauce thickens slightly.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Carries the aromatics and adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Onion
Softens as it cooks, releasing sweetness and a savory aroma into the sauce.
Meat glaze
Concentrates savory meaty flavor and gives the sauce body as it reduces.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the butter and glaze.

The step that matters

Sauté the onion until translucent. Cooking over medium heat softens the onion and draws out its sweetness without browning it. Browning would add bitterness and a different flavor to a delicate sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, meat, butter, sherry, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, meat, butter, sherry, lemon. 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

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipesMince MeatMince Meat37 recipes