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Beefsteak with Mushrooms

A steak served with sautéed mushrooms, onions, and a wine, pepper, salt, and nutmeg seasoning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and butter 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 ↓

Beefsteak with Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt butter in a frying pan.

  2. Peel and add mushrooms to the pan.

  3. Cook mushrooms until heated through.

  4. Season with 1 teaspoon of wine per mushroom, pepper, salt, and a pinch of nutmeg.

  5. Broil porter-house steaks and place on a platter.

  6. Pour the cooked mushrooms over the steaks.

  7. Sauté a little onion in the butter before adding mushrooms for extra flavor.

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

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

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Mushroom + winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,632 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

  4. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Make up the main topping and release moisture as they cook in the butter.
Butter
Carries flavor and helps the mushrooms brown in the pan.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich mushrooms.
Onion
Sautéed in butter, it becomes mildly sweet and adds savory depth.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm aroma that complements the mushrooms.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, wine, pepper, onion. 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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