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Beefsteak and Oysters

A steak topped with a sauce of oysters, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Beefsteak and Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the steak

  1. Broil the steak as usual.

Make the oyster sauce

  1. In a saucepan, heat the oysters with a little of their liquor until boiling.

  2. Skim off any scum that rises.

  3. Stir in the butter and flour mixture, and let it boil for 1 minute until thickened.

Serve

  1. Pour the oyster sauce over the steak and serve hot.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  3. Butter + beeftop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

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

  4. Oyster + beeftop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together798 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Oyster + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,582 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, 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

Oysters
Provide the main flavour and the sauce's base, releasing their liquor as they heat.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it boils, giving it body and a spoonable texture.

The step that matters

Boiling the sauce after adding the butter and flour. Flour only thickens fully when the mixture reaches a boil and stays there briefly; the starch granules swell and set the sauce. Undercooked flour leaves a pasty, raw taste.

“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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