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Sirloin Steaks Aux Cepes

A dish of broiled sirloin steaks topped with a sauce of sautéed cepes, shallot, garlic, and Madeira, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Sirloin Steaks Aux Cepes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Cut the cepes into quarters.

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the oil in a frying pan and fry the cepes with the shallot and garlic for 2 minutes.

  2. Add the mixture to the Madeira sauce and boil for 2 minutes.

Cook and serve

  1. Broil the sirloin steaks as you would for a standard preparation.

  2. Pour the sauce over the steaks.

  3. Sprinkle with chopped parsley.

  4. Serve.

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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Sirloin steaks
Provide the main meat, cooked by broiling to be the centre of the dish.
Cepes
Add earthy, meaty flavour and a tender texture when fried in oil.
Madeira sauce
Forms the rich, wine-based sauce that coats the steaks and mushrooms.
Shallot
Adds a mild, sweet onion aroma that softens as it fries with the mushrooms.

The step that matters

Frying the cepes with the shallot and garlic. Cepes release water as they cook. Frying them in hot oil until the moisture evaporates lets them brown and concentrate their flavour, so the sauce does not become watery.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, garlic, sauce, parsley):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, garlic, sauce, parsley. 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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