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Stewed Steak with Oysters

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 into a stewpan.

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

Cook the steak

  1. In a frying pan, heat the butter and add the steak. Cook for 10 minutes.

  2. Remove the steak and stir the flour into the remaining butter in the pan until dark brown.

  3. Add the oyster liquor and boil for 1 minute.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

  5. 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, then boil for 1 minute.

  2. Serve on a hot dish with points of toast for 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
Long gentle simmering breaks down connective tissue, leaving the meat tender and moist.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour and a delicate texture when cooked briefly at the end.
Butter
Carries the heat for browning the steak and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Browned in the butter, it thickens the cooking liquid into a rich sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, briny flavours of the stew.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the butter until dark brown. Cooking the flour in fat develops a nutty, deeper flavour and colour, and it must be stirred constantly so it does not scorch. Scorched flour tastes bitter and gives the sauce a burnt note.

“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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