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Beefsteaks and Oyster Sauce

Beef steaks served with a sauce made from oysters, ketchup, butter, mace, lemon peel, and optional cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Beefsteaks and Oyster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the oyster sauce

  1. Strain the liquor from the oysters and rinse them in cold water to remove grit.

  2. Simmer the oyster liquor with mace and lemon peel.

  3. Add the oysters and stew for a few minutes.

  4. If using, stir in cream and butter mixed with flour, then let it boil once.

Cook and serve

  1. Season and broil the rump steaks, then serve immediately topped with the oyster sauce.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Ketchup + creamtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together279 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  5. Oyster + ketchuptop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together318 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Give the sauce its briny, savory flavor and tender texture when briefly stewed.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping to give the sauce a smooth, silky body.
Cream
Adds richness and body, thickening the sauce slightly as it boils.
Rump steaks
Provide the main meat, browning under the broiler while staying juicy inside.

The step that matters

Letting the sauce boil only once after adding the cream and butter-flour mixture. Flour thickens the sauce as it heats, but prolonged or vigorous boiling can cause cream to separate and the sauce to turn grainy. A single gentle boil thickens it while keeping it smooth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, ketchup, butter, lemon, cream, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, ketchup, butter, lemon, cream, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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