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Stewed Steak Aux Huitres

A stew of rump steak, onions, walnuts, mushroom ketchup, Worcester sauce, and oysters cooked slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Stewed Steak Aux Huitres

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the butter and flour together in a stewpan.

  2. Peel and chop the onion, and cut up the walnuts.

  3. Add the onion, walnuts, mushroom ketchup, and Worcester sauce to the stewpan.

  4. Lay the steak on top.

Stew and finish

  1. Let it stew for 1.5 hours, turning it every 20 minutes; do not let it boil.

  2. Five minutes before serving, add the oysters, removing the gills and straining their liquor.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Walnut + mushroomtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together763 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 long, gentle stewing, as its connective tissue slowly breaks down.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, light gravy when mixed with butter.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and forms the base for the thickening roux.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it softens in the stew.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds deep savoury, umami flavour to the stewing liquid.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour and are added late so they stay tender.

The step that matters

Keep the stew below a boil. Vigorous boiling tightens the meat's muscle fibres and toughens the steak. Gentle stewing over a long period lets connective tissue break down, leaving the meat tender.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, mushroom, ketchup, sauce, oyster, butter, flour):

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, mushroom, ketchup, sauce, oyster, butter, flour. 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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