Skip to main content
Main

Beefsteak with Oysters

A steak stuffed with oysters, breadcrumbs, butter, and seasonings, then grilled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Beefsteak with Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Remove gills from oysters and chop them.

  2. Add melted butter, seasonings, and enough breadcrumbs to absorb the moisture.

Stuff the steak

  1. Make a slit in the steak from the side with a small knife, cutting through the middle within an inch of the edge all around.

  2. Fill the slit with the oyster mixture and sew or skewer neatly.

Grill and serve

  1. Brush with melted butter and grill for 20 minutes.

  2. Serve on a very hot dish with potato chips.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Oyster + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,663 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Rump steak
Forms the main body of the dish and carries the oyster filling.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour to the stuffing inside the steak.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb the moisture from the oysters so the stuffing holds together.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the outside brown as it grills.

The step that matters

Sewing or skewering the stuffed steak. If the slit is not closed neatly, the oyster filling can leak out during grilling and the steak may cook unevenly. Securing the opening keeps the stuffing inside while the meat cooks.

“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