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Beef Steaks, and Oyster Sauce

A sauce of oysters, butter, flour, ketchup, and stock served over beef steaks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef Steaks, and Oyster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Blanch the oysters and strain the liquor.

  2. Remove the gills from the oysters and return them to the liquor.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add a little flour and stir over the heat for a few minutes.

  3. Pour in the oyster liquor and enough stock to make a sauce.

  4. Bring to a boil, then add the ketchup, pepper, and salt.

  5. Add the oysters and boil briefly.

  6. Pour the sauce over the beef steaks or serve separately.

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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  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. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 savory, briny flavour and a tender texture when briefly cooked.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and with flour forms the base for thickening the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and liquid.
Beef stock
Forms the liquid body of the sauce and adds savory beefy depth.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness, acidity and tomato flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Add the oysters and boil briefly. Oysters toughen and shrink when overcooked, so they should only be heated through in the simmering sauce until they just curl at the edges.

“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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