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Baked Beefsteak
Cut 2 pounds of sirloin, 1/2 inch thick. Mix one cup bread crumbs, 1 tablespoon Crisco, 1 tablespoon chopped parsley, 1/2 tablespoon chopped onion, 1/2 teaspoon each of salt, pepper, and red pepper, 1/2 teaspoon kitchen bouquet, and moisten with stock. Spread this over steak and roll it up, fastening with skewers or tying, and put on rack in roasting pan. Add 1/2 cup stock, and bake 1/2 hour, basting often. Place on hot platter, and pour around it sauce made from 2 tablespoons Crisco and 3 tablespoons flour blended together, with salt and pepper to taste, and 1 1/2 cups beef stock cooked until boiling, then strained and added to 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce.
A rolled and stuffed steak from one of the Crisco promotional cookbooks, written when the shortening was new enough to need naming in every line. The method is sound; the recipe simply assumes a cook who already knows her oven.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. A moderately hot oven, 375F, suits a rolled steak of this size: hot enough to brown the outside during basting, not so hot that the lean sirloin seizes.
- CriscoStraight hydrogenated shortening, and the whole reason the book exists. Butter in the stuffing and butter or oil in the sauce roux give better flavour, with no change in quantity.
- Red pepperIn American books of this period this almost always means cayenne rather than paprika or chilli flakes. Half a teaspoon alongside half a teaspoon of black pepper makes a genuinely peppery filling; a quarter teaspoon is plenty for most tastes.
- Kitchen BouquetA caramel-and-vegetable browning sauce, still sold under the same name. Any browning liquid or a teaspoon of dark soy will stand in; it is there for colour more than flavour.
- Rolling and tyingButcher's twine at 1-inch intervals holds better than skewers and slices more cleanly. Ask for the sirloin cut and pounded to an even half inch, or flatten it yourself between sheets of plastic so the roll is uniform.
- The half hourRealistic only for a thin, evenly rolled steak. Cook to an internal temperature at the centre of the roll rather than by the clock: about 135F for medium, higher if you prefer the stuffing very hot. An overcooked sirloin roll turns dry and stringy.
- The stockAssumes real beef stock, unsalted and gelatinous. Modern boxed broth is saltier, so hold back on the salt in both stuffing and sauce until you have tasted the finished gravy.
- The sauceA plain brown roux gravy. Cook the flour and fat together for a minute or two before the stock goes in, or the sauce tastes raw. Straining it after boiling, as written, catches lumps; add the Worcestershire off the heat at the end.
- YieldTwo pounds of sirloin rolled around a cup of stuffing serves four generously, cut into thick pinwheel slices with the twine removed.
A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil for Procter & Gamble to promote Crisco, which reached American kitchens in 1911; the book supplies a full year of menus in which the new shortening appears again and again. The recipe itself is much older than the fat it calls for: a thin steak spread with seasoned crumbs, rolled, tied and roasted closely resembles the English "beef olive" and the German rouladen, a way of stretching a modest piece of meat with bread and giving it the look of a joint. The Worcestershire finish and the dash of Kitchen Bouquet mark it firmly as American home cooking of the 1910s, when bottled sauces were the accepted shortcut to the deep colour and savour that a long-simmered brown sauce would otherwise require.