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Beefsteak Broiled
Cut your steak one-half inch thick; beat it well with a steak beater. Have your griddle over some fresh coals; put the steak on the griddle, and when it becomes seared, turn it; when seared on both sides put in a stewpan, season well with salt, pepper, and butter; put it in the pan and keep well covered without placing it on the fire. If your heat is strong, four or five minutes will be sufficient to cook it. - Mrs. J. P. Calhoun.
A two-stage method: hard sear over live coals, then finish in a covered pan off the heat. The whole thing takes minutes, so have the seasoning and the pan ready before the steak goes on.
- The hingeThe steak is never cooked through on the fire. It is seared on both sides, then transferred to a covered stewpan away from the heat, where residual warmth and the trapped steam finish it. Put the pan back over flame and you have a grey, braised steak instead of a broiled one.
- "Griddle over some fresh coals"Period usage is loose; here the pan or rack sits directly over coals, and many writers of the era used "griddle" and "gridiron" (a slotted or ribbed iron rack) interchangeably. "Fresh coals" means coals just raked up, glowing without flame. A modern equivalent is a ridged cast-iron pan preheated until a drop of water skitters and vanishes, or a charcoal grill after the coals have ashed over.
- "Stewpan"A shallow lidded saucepan, not a casserole dish. Any heavy pan with a tight lid works; warm it first so it does not chill the meat.
- ThicknessHalf an inch is thinner than most steaks sold today. Ask for it cut to size, or the searing and resting times will leave the interior raw. A thicker steak needs a different method entirely.
- The steak beaterA ridged wooden or iron mallet, called for often enough in cookbooks of the period to be unremarkable. The usual explanation is that beef of the day was leaner and tougher than most sold today. With a modern well-marbled sirloin or ribeye, pounding is optional and will cost you texture; with a thin round steak it still earns its place.
- Timing and donenessRoughly 60-90 seconds per side on a properly hot surface, then four or five minutes covered off the heat as written; on a half-inch steak that will likely come out around medium-rare, though the covered rest can carry it further, so check rather than trust the clock. Whole cuts of beef are generally treated as safe at the eater's preferred doneness because contamination is on the surface, where the sear reaches; ground beef is different, and this method is not for it.
- SaltThe original seasons after searing, which keeps the surface dry enough to brown. If you prefer to salt in advance, do it at least 40 minutes ahead so the surface has time to dry again.
- YieldA half-inch steak of ordinary size serves one. The butter and juices left in the covered pan are the sauce — pour them over rather than draining them off.
Before gas ranges were common, "broiled" meant cooked on a gridiron directly over coals, the opposite of the modern American usage in which the heat comes from above. Recipes of this period are insistent about fresh coals. The finish in a covered pan off the fire may have been a practical solution to a real problem: a hearth's heat could not be turned down, so the cook removed the meat from the fire and let the pan do the rest. The attribution to Mrs. J. P. Calhoun is typical of American community cookbooks, which were assembled from contributions by named local women and often published to raise funds for a church or club; the recipes read as one cook's shorthand to another rather than as tested instructions.