Skip to main content
Main

Beefsteak and Mushrooms

A broiled beefsteak topped with a brown mushroom sauce made with butter, onion, sage, thyme, flour, water, beef stock, sherry, and canned mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sage and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,485 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Beefsteak and Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped onion, sage, and thyme.

  3. Sauté until the onion is soft.

  4. Stir in the flour.

  5. Cook until the mixture turns brown.

  6. Gradually add the water.

  7. Bring to a boil.

  8. Simmer for 30 minutes.

  9. Add the beef stock, salt, nutmeg, and sherry. Mix well.

  10. Stir in the mushrooms.

  11. Boil for 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the broiled beefsteak.

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. Sage + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,485 recipes

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

  2. Sage + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together642 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

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

  4. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps carry the aroma of the herbs and onion.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and water, giving it body.
Beef stock
Adds savory meaty flavor to the sauce.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the sauce.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and soft texture to the sauce.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma as it softens in the butter.

The step that matters

Cook until the mixture turns brown. The flour and butter must brown enough to develop nutty, toasted flavor before the liquid is added. Stopping too early leaves a raw, pasty taste, while cooking too long can scorch the roux and make the sauce bitter.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sage, thyme, flour, beef, nutmeg, sherry):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sage, thyme, flour, beef, nutmeg, sherry. 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

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes