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Green Turtle Steak

A steak simmered in a sauce of butter, mushroom ketchup, sugar, jelly, wine, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Green Turtle Steak

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a chafing dish.

  2. Add the mushroom ketchup, sugar, jelly, wine, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Simmer the steak in this mixture until tender.

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

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

  3. Ketchup + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  5. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce, carrying flavour and helping it cling to the steak.
Mushroom ketchup
Contributes concentrated savoury, umami depth to the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the wine and ketchup.
Jelly
Adds sweetness and body, thickening the sauce slightly as it simmers.
Wine
Provides acidity and liquid that tenderises the steak as it simmers.
Steak
Main protein that becomes tender as it simmers slowly in the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer the steak until tender. Gentle simmering, rather than a hard boil, lets connective tissue break down slowly while the meat stays juicy. Boiling vigorously toughens muscle fibres and can make the sauce reduce too fast.

“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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