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Beefsteak, with Oyster Sauce

A steak served with a sauce made from 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, with Oyster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the steak

  1. Cook the beefsteak to your desired doneness.

Make the oyster sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the oyster liquor and butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the flour and stir until mixed; bring to a boil.

  3. Add the oysters and let it boil for a moment.

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. 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

Beefsteak
Provides the main meat and the body of the dish.
Oysters
Supply the savory, briny flavor of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, glossy texture.
Flour
Thickens the oyster liquor and butter into a sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and boiling. Flour thickens the sauce only when it is stirred smooth and brought to a boil, since starch needs heat to swell and thicken. Stirring prevents lumps, which are hard to fix once formed.

“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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