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Braised Beefsteak with Brown Gravy

Braised beefsteak with brown gravy, flavored with mace, cloves, allspice, and finished with oysters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Braised Beefsteak with Brown Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Rub the beef with a mixture of salt, pepper, summer savory, and grated onion.

  2. In a pan, melt the butter and brown the beef on all sides.

Braise

  1. Add the flour and stir until well combined.

  2. Pour in the water and wine, then add the mace, cloves, allspice, and remaining seasonings.

  3. Cover and braise the beef on low heat until tender.

  4. Add the oysters in the last few minutes of cooking.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Flour and butter 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

Beef
Provides the main meat that becomes tender through slow, moist braising.
Flour
Thickens the braising liquid into a smooth, body-rich gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and helps brown the beef before braising.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour to the gravy near the end of cooking.
Wine
Adds acidity and depth to the braising liquid.

The step that matters

Browning the beef in butter. Searing the meat until deeply browned builds flavour through the Maillard reaction, which carries into the gravy. Pale, unbrowned meat yields a flatter-tasting sauce.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, oyster, flour, butter, wine, clove, allspice):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, oyster, flour, butter, wine, clove, allspice. 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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