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Beefsteak and Oysters

A steak served with a butter‑flour sauce made from oysters.

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

Prepare

  1. Broil the steak as usual.

Make the oyster sauce

  1. In a stew pan, heat 1 quart of oysters with a little of their liquor until boiling.

  2. Skim off any foam that rises.

  3. Stir in 3 ounces of butter mixed with 1 tablespoon of sifted flour and let it boil for 1 minute until thickened.

Serve

  1. Pour the oyster mixture 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. 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

Steak
Provides the main meat base that the oyster sauce is poured over.
Oysters
Supply the briny, savoury flavour that defines the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the butter and oyster liquor into a smooth, cohesive sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the butter and flour. Flour must be fully blended into the butter and boiled for the full minute so its starch swells and thickens the sauce. Undercooked flour leaves a pasty, raw taste and a thin texture.

“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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