Name: Sauce for Steak
Ingredients: ½ cup red wine ketchup; 1 tablespoon butter; ¼ teaspoon pepper; 1 tablespoon shallot vinegar

Why it works: Red wine and vinegar work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 575 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Sauce for Steak

Ingredients

½ cup red wine ketchup
1 tablespoon butter
¼ teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoon shallot vinegar

Directions

Make the sauce

In a small saucepan, combine red wine ketchup, butter, pepper, and shallot vinegar.
Heat the mixture over medium heat, stirring until well combined.

Serve

Pour the hot sauce over the steak before serving.

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.

Red wine + vinegartop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together575 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,898 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Shallot + vinegartop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,374 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Red wine + shallottop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together231 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Red wine ketchup: Provides the main body, sweetness and tang that make up the sauce.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded texture.
Shallot vinegar: Adds acidity and a sharp, savoury bite that cuts through the richness.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (red wine, ketchup, butter, pepper, vinegar):

Capsicumfits better
Shallotthe original
Tomatofits about as well
Mustardfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against red wine, ketchup, butter, pepper, vinegar. 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.