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French Beefsteak
Cut your steak two-thirds of an inch thick from a fillet of beef; dip into melted butter, lay them on a hot gridiron and broil over fresh coals. When very nearly done sprinkle pepper and salt. Have ready some parsley, chopped fine and mixed with softened butter. Beat them to a cream and pour in the middle of the dish. Dip each piece of steak in the butter, turning them over, and lay them round on the platter. Very nice with the juice of lemon. Serve very hot.
A plain broiled fillet finished with maître d'hôtel butter. The technique is sound; only the equipment and the seasoning order need translating.
- The hingeSeason after cooking, as written, if you are working over live coals. On a cast-iron pan or modern grill, many cooks prefer to salt some time ahead — half an hour or so — which is often said to give a better crust and deeper seasoning.
- Gridiron over fresh coals"Fresh coals" appears to mean a clear, hot fire without flame; the butter coating will flare if there is open flame. A ridged cast-iron grill pan over high heat is the closest indoor equivalent; get it smoking before the meat goes on.
- Thickness and timingTwo-thirds of an inch is thin for fillet. Over high heat that is roughly 2 to 3 minutes a side for medium-rare, about 130F internal. No resting time is given; a brief rest of a minute or two is all a steak this thin needs, and the recipe wants it served very hot.
- Fillet of beefThis is beef tenderloin, cut into tournedos or medallions. It is lean, so the butter dip is doing real work — it is not optional garnish.
- The parsley butter"Beat them to a cream" means softened, not melted, butter whipped with the parsley until pale and spreadable. Roughly 4 tablespoons butter to 2 tablespoons chopped parsley for four steaks. The recipe does not say whether the lemon juice goes into the butter or over the meat; either reading fits.
- Melted butter for dippingThe recipe uses butter twice: plain melted butter before broiling, and the parsley cream after. Clarified butter is better for the first dip, since milk solids scorch on a hot gridiron.
- ServingThe pooled butter in the centre of the platter is meant to be spooned over at the table, so the dish must be genuinely hot — warm the platter. Four steaks of this size serve four.
The parsley-and-butter finish here is maître d'hôtel butter, one of the simplest of the French compound butters, generally traced to nineteenth-century French cooking and standard by the time Escoffier codified it. In American household books of the period, "French" attached to a beefsteak recipe often signalled a finishing butter and a squeeze of lemon rather than the gravy or brown sauce an English-style steak might carry.