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Broiled Fillets of Beef with Oysters
Broil steak according to recipe; place on hot platter; sprinkle with salt and pepper; cover with oysters; dot with butter; and bake in oven until edges of oysters curl. Serve immediately, garnished with parsley and lemon. Sautéd Fillet of Beef Sauté steak two minutes. Mix two tablespoons Worcestershire sauce, one half teaspoon salt, one quarter teaspoon mustard, one tablespoon melted butter, and one tablespoon chopped pimolas. Spread on both sides of steak, dip in bread crumbs, and sauté until crumbs are brown.
Two short variations that assume you already know Lowney's basic broiled and sautéed fillet. Both hinge on very brief cooking.
- The hinge: the oystersShucked oysters need only a minute or two of heat, and the visual cue in the recipe is the whole instruction — the moment the edges ruffle and curl, they are done. Left in longer they tighten into rubber and weep liquor onto the platter.
- Oven heat for the toppingThe recipe gives no temperature, only "bake in oven." A hot oven, or better still the broiler, suits the purpose: setting the oysters fast without cooking the steak any further.
- Use an ovenproof platter"Hot platter" in the original most likely just means a pre-warmed serving dish, but since this one goes into the oven it needs to be metal or heavy earthenware. Modern china platters and anything with metallic decoration should not go under a broiler.
- Drain the oystersPat shucked oysters dry before laying them on the steak, or their liquor will pool and steam rather than concentrate. Reserve the liquor for a sauce if you like.
- "Broil steak according to recipe"The reference is to the book's plain broiled fillet; the original gives no thickness or timing here. Since the oven finish will carry the meat further, stop the broiling short of your target doneness.
- PimolasA trade name of the period for green olives stuffed with pimiento. Pimiento-stuffed olives, chopped, are the direct substitute.
- Sauté two minutesTwo minutes total is only credible for a thin, pounded fillet; with a normal-thickness steak treat it as a quick sear per side. Note that the steak is then sautéed a second time after crumbing, so keep the first pass brief or the finished meat will be grey through.
- Crumbing that sticksThe Worcestershire and butter paste is wet, so press the crumbs on firmly and let the steak sit a few minutes before it meets the pan. Use dry fine crumbs, not fresh, and moderate heat — butter in the paste plus crumbs will scorch over high flame.
- YieldBoth variations are written for a single steak. The recipe does not quantify the oysters; allow enough to cover the steak.
Pairing beef with oysters was thoroughly ordinary in American and British cooking well into the twentieth century, when oysters were cheap and abundant along the Atlantic coast — the same logic that put them into steak-and-oyster pies, carpetbag steak and countless oyster sauces for beefsteak. Lowney's Cook Book, published by the Walter M. Lowney Company of Boston, is best remembered for its chocolate recipes, but it aimed to be a complete household manual, and so it includes a chapter on meat. The two variations here also show the period's fondness for bottled flavourings: Worcestershire sauce and "pimolas" — a brand name for pimiento-stuffed olives that has since dissolved into the generic product — were exactly the kind of ready-made sharpness a cook reached for to dress up plain fillet.