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Broiled Beef and Mushrooms

A dish of broiled roast beef served with mashed potatoes and mushroom sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Broiled Beef and Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes.

  2. Mash the boiled potatoes with 1 oz of butter, salt, and pepper.

Make the sauce

  1. Make a sauce with the tin of mushrooms, mushroom ketchup, 1 oz of butter, and seasoning.

Cook the beef and serve

  1. Broil the beef.

  2. Cut the beef into slices.

  3. Pile the mashed potatoes on a dish.

  4. Arrange the beef slices around the potatoes.

  5. Pour the mushroom sauce over and around the beef and potatoes.

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. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  3. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Mushroom + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together968 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Roast beef
Provides the main protein and meaty flavour once broiled and sliced.
Potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish, and when mashed with butter they give a soft, creamy base.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the mashed potatoes and the sauce.
Mushrooms
Supply the savoury, earthy flavour base of the sauce.

The step that matters

Broil the beef. Broiling is intense, direct heat, so tinned or pre-cooked beef can dry out or scorch quickly. Watch it closely so it only warms through and browns lightly.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits about as well
  3. Onionfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, mushroom, butter, 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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