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Beefsteak and Oysters

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 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 foam 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. 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 flavor and salty, briny character of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the sauce as it boils, giving it body.

The step that matters

Boiling the sauce after adding the butter and flour. Flour only thickens fully when the mixture reaches a boil and is held there, so the sauce stays thin if it is not boiled long enough. Skimming foam first keeps the sauce clean and clear.

“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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