Skip to main content
Main

Oyster Sauce for Beef Steaks

A sauce made from oysters, soy sauce, ketchup, cullis, butter, and seasonings, simmered and strained over beef steaks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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.

  2. Reserve their liquor.

  3. Wash the oysters.

  4. Remove the gills.

Make the sauce

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

  2. Heat over medium until nearly boiling.

  3. Thicken with a mixture of flour and water or flour and butter.

  4. Season with Cayenne pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

  5. Strain the sauce over the oysters.

  6. Gently stew for 5 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. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

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

  4. Oyster + saucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 their reserved liquor adds briny depth to the sauce.
Soy sauce
Adds salty, savoury depth and colour to the sauce.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity that rounds out the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy texture to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Gently stew the oysters. Oyster meat is delicate and its proteins toughen and shrink when held at a hard simmer. Keep the heat low and the stew brief so the oysters stay tender and plump.

“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