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Mock Beefsteak

A veal steak seasoned with salt and pepper, fried in pork fat, served with a mushroom and thyme sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and thyme are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,585 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Mock Beefsteak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Sprinkle coarse sea salt over the leg of veal and let it sit for a week.

  2. Cut the veal into steaks.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry the steaks in the fat from browned salt pork, or broil them.

  2. Serve with butter and pepper; no additional salt is needed.

Make the mushroom sauce

  1. For the sauce, mix cold gravy or soup stock with flour, thyme, pepper, and button mushrooms.

  2. Fry the veal and ham until light brown, then remove from grease and place in a clean pan.

  3. Pour the sauce over the veal and ham, and let it simmer for 30 minutes.

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. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  2. Thyme + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

  4. Pork + mushroomtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,875 recipes

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

  5. Veal + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides the meat itself, which becomes tender and flavorful as it is salted, cut, and cooked.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the veal deeply during the week-long rest, drawing flavor into the meat.
Flour
Thickens the cold gravy or stock into a sauce that coats the veal and ham.
Button mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and body to the sauce as they simmer with the veal.
Ham or salt pork
Adds salty, savory flavor and browning to the veal and the sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the veal until light brown. Browning the surface creates flavorful Maillard reaction compounds. Cooking past light brown can dry the meat, while too little browning leaves the sauce tasting flat.

Swap the thyme

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

  1. Thymethe original
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Sagefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pork, butter, pepper, ham, flour, mushroom. 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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