Name: Porterhouse Steak with Oysters
Ingredients: 1 porterhouse steak; coarse sea salt; black pepper; 2 tablespoons butter; juice of ½ lemon; 1 pint oysters; 1 tablespoon butter (for roux); 1 tablespoon flour

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Porterhouse Steak with Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the steak

Broil the steak on both sides and transfer it to a hot dish.
Season with salt and pepper, then rub the steak with a mixture of butter and lemon juice.

Make the oyster topping

In a saucepan, heat the oysters without their liquor until the edges ruffle.
Add butter and flour to the oysters to make a roux, stirring until combined.

Serve

Pour the oyster mixture over the hot steak and serve immediately.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,184 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together30,404 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Porterhouse steak: Provides the main meat, cooked by broiling for browning and flavor.
Oysters: Add a briny, savory flavor and tender texture to the topping.
Butter: Adds richness and flavor, and with flour forms a roux that thickens the oyster mixture.
Flour: Thickens the butter and oyster liquid into a roux, giving the topping body.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and briny oysters.

The step that matters

Heating the oysters until the edges ruffle. Overheating toughens oysters and makes them shrink and taste rubbery, so they should be heated only until the edges curl. Serving them immediately keeps them tender and the topping hot.

“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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Porterhouse Steak with Oysters