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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

  1. Wash the oysters in water.

  2. Drain the oysters into a saucepan.

  3. Heat the oyster liquor until it boils.

  4. Skim the oyster liquor and set it aside.

Brown and stew

  1. Melt the butter over medium heat in a frying pan.

  2. Add the steak to the pan.

  3. Cook the steak for 10 minutes.

  4. Remove the steak from the pan.

  5. Stir the flour into the remaining butter in the pan until it turns dark brown.

  6. Add the oyster liquor to the pan.

  7. Boil the mixture for 1 minute.

  8. Season with salt and pepper.

  9. Return the steak to the pan.

  10. Cover the pan.

  11. Simmer for 30 minutes or until the steak is tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the oysters and lemon juice to the pan.

  2. Boil for 1 minute.

  3. Serve hot with points of toast as a 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
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, gentle simmering.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour to the stewing liquid and sauce.
Butter
Carries the frying of the steak and the flour, adding richness to the sauce.
Flour
Browned in the butter, it thickens the liquid into a sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savoury sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the flour into the butter until dark brown. Cooking the flour in fat develops a nutty, roasted colour and flavour and removes its raw taste. Stopping too early leaves a pale, floury sauce; going too far burns it and turns it bitter.

“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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