Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Steak with Oysters

A stew of rump steak and oysters cooked with butter, flour, and lemon juice.

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

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Stewed Steak with Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Wash the oysters in water and drain them into a stewpan.

  2. Heat the oyster liquor until it boils, skim it, and set it aside.

Cook the steak

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan and add the steak.

  2. Cook the steak for 10 minutes, then remove it from the pan.

  3. Stir the flour into the remaining butter until dark brown.

  4. Add the oyster liquor to the pan and boil for 1 minute.

  5. Season with salt and pepper.

  6. Return the steak to the pan, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes or until tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the oysters and lemon juice to the pan and boil for 1 minute.

  2. Serve on a hot dish with toast points as garnish.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  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. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Rump steak
Becomes tender through slow simmering, giving the dish its main body.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour to the sauce and are cooked only briefly at the end.
Butter
Carries the flavour of the pan and browns the flour for a richer sauce.
Flour
Browns in the butter and thickens the oyster liquor into a sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savoury sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in the butter. Flour cooked until dark brown develops a nutty, deep flavour and colour, but it can scorch quickly. Stir constantly over moderate heat, then add the liquor so the roux thickens the sauce smoothly.

“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