In 1952, The Sun in Sydney reported that Patricia O’Brien, who had been working for the Australian Radio News Bureau in New York, had recently returned to these shores. Among Miss O’Brien’s responsibilities in the USA had been regular broadcasts educating locals about Australian food. As well as proclaiming that wine trifle was considered abroad to be Australia’s national sweet, she declared that “Other Australian ‘national dishes’ are carpetbag steak and pumpkin scones”. At least one notable American seems to have accepted O’Brien’s contention. On a visit to Australia in 1960, the New York cookery school principal Dione Lucas said that, if she opened a school in Sydney, “Perhaps I could even launch a propaganda campaign from my school against those dreadful carpetbag steaks.”
Other American listeners may well have scoffed, as the carpetbag steak – a steak stuffed with oysters – was certainly known in the USA long before Miss O’Brien’s visit and was, according to some sources, even invented there. Some say the first printed recipe was developed by New York chef Louis Diat in 1941. In fact, its origins are obscure. According to Wikipedia, the dish originated in Swansea, Wales, where oyster fishermen ate oysters with their steak. Whether they called it carpetbag steak is not clear.
We don’t know when carpetbag steak first appeared in Australia. In One Continuous Picnic, Michael Symons writes that it was included in Jean Rutledge’s Goulburn Cookery Book, which appeared in 1899, under the name “Carpet Bag a la Colchester.” It seems that the English Isabella Beeton had previously published a carpetbag steak recipe in All About Cookery in 1861, and her works were widely circulated in the colonies.
Other early references exist in the USA. In 1880, the Comet of Jackson, Mississippi, wrote that the editor of a rival publication breakfasted daily on carpetbag steak. In 1919, the Hartford Courant of Connecticut mentioned a recipe from the Trocadero of London. Closer to home, in 1926, The Northern Champion of Taree, New South Wales, described a dish they called “Saddleback Steak” as “really a dish for the gods.”
It is true, however, that carpetbag steak enjoyed something of a heyday in Australia in the 1950s and ’60s. Its reputation as an Australian classic suggests that, although we considered it a luxury dish, it had perhaps gone out of fashion elsewhere in the world. The Australian Women’s Weekly published the following recipe in 1964:
Piece of steak (rump or sirloin) at least 2in. thick, cut in one pieces, and weighing about 3 lb., about 20 small oysters, salt, pepper, melted butter.
Make pocket in side of steak, sprinkle pocket with salt and pepper. Stuff with the oysters, sew up or fasten with skewers. Brush steak with melted butter, cook 10 to 15 minutes on each side under hot griller. Remove steak to platter, cut into serving portions, serve immediately.
Although there’s a certain nostalgia for recipes like this one, it’s unlikely that you’ll find carpetbag steak on the menu at today’s fine diners. However, the idea of combining seafood with steak persists, particularly in steak houses and pubs. These days it’s likely to be known as Surf and Turf or, perhaps, Reef and Beef, and the seafood could be oysters, prawns or rock lobster tails.