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Stewed Steak with Oysters

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

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.

Brown the steak

  1. In a frying pan, melt the butter over medium heat and add the steak.

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

Make the sauce and stew

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

  2. Add the oyster liquor and boil for 1 minute, seasoning with salt and pepper.

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

  4. Add the oysters and lemon juice, then boil for 1 minute.

Serve

  1. 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 simmering in the sauce breaks down connective tissue, making the meat tender.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour to the stew and sauce.
Butter
Carries the browning of the steak and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cooking liquid into a smooth sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, briny flavours.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in the butter. Cooking the flour until it turns dark brown builds a nutty, toasted flavour and colour in the sauce. If it is not cooked long enough, the sauce tastes raw and floury; if cooked too long, it turns 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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