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Sauce

Oyster Sauce for Beef Steaks

A savory sauce made from oysters, oyster liquor, soy sauce, ketchup, cullis, butter, and seasonings, served over beef steaks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Oyster Sauce for Beef Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Blanch the oysters and reserve their liquor.

  2. Wash and remove the gills from the oysters.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the oyster liquor, soy sauce, ketchup, cullis, and butter.

  2. Heat over medium until nearly boiling.

  3. Thicken with a mixture of flour and water.

  4. Season with cayenne pepper, salt, and lemon juice to taste.

Finish

  1. Strain the sauce over the oysters and gently stew for five minutes.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Ketchup + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 tender, briny texture of the dish.
Oyster liquor
Adds briny, savoury flavour and liquid to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat, richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the steak and the oysters.
Cullis
Forms the savoury liquid base that gives the sauce body.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity that round out the savoury flavours.

The step that matters

Gently stewing the oysters in the sauce. Oysters are delicate, and prolonged or vigorous heat makes their proteins contract, so they turn firm and rubbery. A gentle simmer for a short time keeps them tender while warming them through.

“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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