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Porterhouse Steak
Have large porterhouse steak well trimmed and shaped, and slit with sharp knife an opening flatwise through sirloin and tenderloin. Make forcemeat of 1 dozen olives chopped, 2 pounded anchovies, 1 chopped red pepper, salt and onion juice to taste, and 2 tablespoons melted Crisco. With this forcemeat fill smoothly cavities made in steak. Pinch steak together firmly at edges and set away on ice for 1 hour or even longer. Broil them over clear fire and serve without sauce.
A stuffed porterhouse, cut as a pocket rather than butterflied, with a salty olive-anchovy filling standing in for sauce. Two details carry the dish: a tight seal and a genuinely hot fire.
- The pocketCut horizontally into the thick side of the steak, working the knife flat to open a cavity on either side of the bone without piercing the outer faces. A porterhouse of 1 1/2 to 2 inches will take stuffing; a thinner supermarket cut will not.
- Sealing"Pinch together firmly" is optimistic on its own. Close the opening with a few short toothpicks or a couple of stitches of butcher's twine, and remove them before serving. The hour on ice is not idle time -- chilling firms the fat in the forcemeat so it stays put over the fire.
- CriscoThis book was published to promote Crisco, so shortening appears where an older cook would have used butter. Butter or olive oil works better here for flavour and the recipe loses nothing.
- Olives and anchoviesUse brine-cured green olives, pitted, and two oil-packed anchovy fillets mashed to a paste. The mixture is already very salty; add salt only after tasting.
- Red pepperIn period usage this could mean a fresh red chile or a sweet red pepper, and the recipe does not specify which. Either reads well; a single fresh red chile, seeded and finely chopped, suits a seasoning forcemeat.
- Onion juiceGrate half a small onion and press the pulp through a sieve, or grate on a microplane and use the liquid. A teaspoon is plenty for a dozen olives.
- Broiling"A clear fire" means coals burned down past flame, or a broiler fully preheated with the rack about 3 inches from the element. Figure 5 to 7 minutes a side for a 1 1/2-inch steak to reach 130F at the centre, away from the bone, then rest it 10 minutes before carving.
- YieldOne large porterhouse of about 2 lb serves two generously, or three with substantial sides. The forcemeat quantity suits a single steak, not several.
This comes from a Crisco-sponsored recipe book of the mid-1910s, when Procter & Gamble was working hard to install its new hydrogenated shortening in dishes where cooks had reached for butter or beef fat -- hence the two tablespoons of melted Crisco in a forcemeat that would otherwise be bound with butter. The stuffing itself is older and thoroughly hotel-kitchen: chopped olives and pounded anchovy were a common shorthand for savoury depth in Anglo-American cookery of the period, the same flavour logic behind anchovy butter, olive sauce and the Victorian "savoury" course. Serving the steak "without sauce" is the point of the exercise; the seasoning has been moved inside the meat, which spares the cook a separate pan sauce and reads as a small piece of restaurant showmanship for a household table.