Skip to main content
Main

Broiled Beef with Oyster Sauce

Broiled beef served with oyster sauce over mashed potatoes.

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

Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Broiled Beef with Oyster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the oyster sauce

  1. Strain the oyster liquor into a stewpan and add oysters.

  2. Add cloves, mace, butter, flour, pepper, and salt.

  3. Simmer gently for 5 minutes.

Assemble and serve

  1. Prepare a dish with a border of browned mashed potatoes.

  2. Pour the hot oyster sauce into the center of the dish.

  3. Arrange slices of cold roast beef around the potatoes.

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Potato + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main flavor and texture of the sauce, releasing their liquor as it simmers.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce slightly so it coats the beef and potatoes.
Mashed potatoes
Form a browned border that frames the dish and adds a contrasting texture.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 5 minutes. Boiling vigorously can toughen oysters and make them shrink and curdle, while a gentle simmer keeps them tender. Flour added to the butter needs enough heat and stirring to cook out its raw taste and thicken the liquid evenly.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, clove, butter, flour, pepper, potato, beef. 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

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes