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Beef-Steaks and Onions

Beef steaks cooked in butter, topped with browned onions and a mushroom ketchup flour sauce.

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

Beef-Steaks and Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the steaks

  1. Season the steaks with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  2. Fry the steaks in butter until done.

Make the onions and sauce

  1. Add sliced onions to the pan and fry until nicely browned.

  2. Place the steaks on a serving dish and top with the fried onions.

  3. In the frying pan, add mushroom ketchup and flour, stirring to thicken.

  4. Let it boil for about one minute, then pour over the steaks.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  2. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  5. 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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fries the steaks and carries flavour and browning from the pan.
Onions
Soften and brown in the pan, adding sweetness and savoury depth.
Flour
Thickens the pan juices into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds a concentrated savoury, umami note to the sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with flour. Flour must be stirred into the pan juices and brought to a boil so its starch swells and thickens the sauce. Boiling for about a minute ensures the starch cooks fully, avoiding a raw floury taste and a thin, lumpy sauce.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, mushroom, ketchup, flour. 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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