The Truth about Carpetbag Steak.

A small comment in an article I read recently stated that ‘Carpetbag Steak’ was an Australian invention, and suggested that indeed it was a national dish. I have lived in this country since the mid 1960’s, and I am here to tell you – as both a consumer and food history enthusiast – that this is a ridiculous myth.  The concept of a steak stuffed with oysters and grilled (or ‘broiled’, if you prefer that term) – did appear on menus of Australian restaurants of the more expensive kind, in decades past, but I cannot remember last time I it listed on any menu, anywhere (which is a surely a sign that it is due for revival.)

I hasten to add that the simple combination of beef and oysters is quite old, oysters once upon a time being so cheap that they were a useful way of bulking out expensive meat dishes. The best example of this is the old-fashioned ‘steak and oyster pie’, which only became ‘steak and kidney pie’ in the latter half of the nineteenth century, when oysters became dearer than kidneys.

The OED is seriously deficient on the topic of carpetbag steak, giving the first mention in English as late as 1958, in The Times. Even worse – the second supporting quotation, from 1969, also from The Times says ‘Many ‘foreign’ dishes are really British. Like Australian ‘carpetbag steak’—rare fillet stuffed with oysters.’  Many other references suggest the invention of this dish was in the mid-twentieth century, the favoured ‘inventor’ being Louis Diat, whose book Cooking a la Ritz, published in 1941, included the following recipe:


Carpet-Bag Steak.
Have the butcher cut steak from the sirloin 1 1/2 to 2 inches thick, and then cut through the center to make a pocket. Stuff this pocket with raw oysters, seasoned with salt an pepper. Then sew the edges of pocket together. Broil about fifteen minutes on each side. Serve with any desired potatoes."

There are earlier printed recipes for carpet-bag or carpetbagger steak, or for the same dish without the name. A well-known Australian cookery teacher and cook book writer was Amy Shauer. One of her many books, published in 1909 included the following recipe:

Steak and Oystr Filling
Choose a good tender steak, and have it cut about 2 inches thick. Split it through, and fill in between with raw oysters, lightly seasoned with cayenne and a few drops of lemon juice. Sew up the steak, and grill carefully for 20 minutes to 1/2 an hour. Rubbing the steak over with oiled butter or salad oil prevents the juice escaping, and ensures it coming to table a rich brown outside and tender and juicy inside."
The Schauer Cookery Book, (1909) Mis A and Miss M Schauer

Published recipes are late records of dishes that have already been in existence for some time. But how long is this in the case of carpetbag steak? There is an intriguing snippet, in a column of small snippets, in the Logansport Pharos [Logansport, Indiana], of Thursday Evening, July 23, 1891 which says ‘“Carpetbag steak,” a rare delicacy now, is slit and stuffed with oysters and broiled. – Hotel Mail.’ This sentence, if I read the nuances correctly, suggests that carpetbag steak had already had its hey-day by the end of 1891. The snippet, and the absence of references in Australia or elsewhere around this date also strongly suggests that the dish is an American invention.

Surely there must be other, earlier, references to a dish that was apparently already popular in 1891? See what you can find, my friends, and lets try to put a date and ethnicity on this early ‘Beef and Reef’ dish.

Quotation for the Day.

“Eat slowly; only men in rags
and gluttons old in sin
Mistake themselves for carpet-bags
And tumble victuals in.”
            Walter Alexander Raleigh (1861-1922), Stans Puer ad Mensam.