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Beef Steaks and Oysters

A dish of oysters simmered in jelly gravy and butter, served over a cooked beef steak.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Beef Steaks and Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the oyster sauce

  1. Put the oysters in a saucepan with their liquor and bring to a boil.

  2. Add the water and cook until the oysters are done.

  3. Drain the oysters and let the liquor settle, then pour off the clear liquid.

  4. Remove the gills from the oysters and add the jelly gravy to the liquor.

  5. Stir in the butter and flour, then boil for 15 minutes.

  6. Add the oysters to the sauce and let it stand.

Serve

  1. Prepare the beef steak as usual and place it on a hot dish.

  2. Pour the sauce and oysters over the steak.

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. Butter + beeftop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Oyster + beeftop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together798 recipes

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

  5. 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 seafood flavor and tender, briny pieces in the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce liquid so it clings to the steak and oysters.
Jelly gravy
Forms the sauce base, adding body and savory flavor to the liquor.
Beef steak
Serves as the meaty base that the oyster sauce is poured over.

The step that matters

Stir in the butter and flour, then boil for 15 minutes. Flour must be fully cooked in hot liquid to thicken smoothly and lose its raw starchy taste. Boiling long enough with the butter also helps prevent lumps, so the sauce stays silky rather than pasty.

“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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