Skip to main content
Main

Beef Steaks and Ovster-sauce

A dish of broiled rump steaks topped with a sauce made from oysters, oyster liquor, mace, lemon peel, cream, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Beef Steaks and Ovster-sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the oyster sauce

  1. Strain the liquor from the oysters.

  2. Place the strained liquor in cold water to remove grit.

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

  4. Add the oysters to the simmering liquor and stew for a few minutes.

  5. If available, add cream and butter mixed with flour to the oysters.

  6. Let the mixture boil once.

Cook and serve the steaks

  1. Season the rump steaks.

  2. Broil the rump steaks.

  3. Serve the oyster sauce over the broiled steaks 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.

  1. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Oyster + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,886 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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 seafood flavor and tender texture in the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter, giving it body.
Cream
Adds richness and softens the sauce's flavor; included only if available.
Rump steaks
Provide the beefy, browned main protein that the sauce is served over.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour mixture. Flour mixed with butter must be cooked gently in the simmering liquid so it thickens smoothly without lumps or a raw starchy taste. Letting it boil once, rather than boiling hard for long, helps keep the sauce smooth and prevents the cream from separating.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, lemon, cream, butter, flour. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes