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Broiled Beefsteak
Lay a thick tender steak upon a gridiron well greased with butter or beef suet, over hot coals; when done on one side have ready the warmed platter with a little butter on it, lay the steak, without pressing it, upon the platter with the cooked side down so that the juices which have gathered may run on the platter, quickly place it again on gridiron, and cook the other side. When done to liking, put on platter again, spread lightly with butter, season with salt and pepper, and place where it will keep warm (over boiling steam is best) for a few moments, but do not let butter become oily. Serve on hot plates. Many prefer to sear on one side, turn immediately and sear the other, and finish cooking, turning often; garnish with fried sliced potatoes, or with browned potato balls the size of a marble, piled at each end of platter. -Mrs. W. W. W.
A gridiron steak from a coal range, written before anyone owned a thermometer. The method translates cleanly to a charcoal grill or a heavy cast-iron pan, but a few of the assumptions behind it need spelling out.
- The hinge: never press the steakThe recipe says to lay the steak down "without pressing it," and although the phrase falls where the meat goes onto the platter, the principle holds throughout: pressing drives out the juices the recipe then goes to the trouble of catching. No spatula weight, no piercing with a fork - turn with tongs.
- "Hot coals" means a clean, ash-covered bedA gridiron sat over a raked coal fire, roughly the heat of a charcoal grill when you can hold a hand five inches above the grate for two or three seconds. Dripping fat should sizzle rather than flare; flames licking the meat will scorch it.
- Gridiron equivalentsA ridged cast-iron grill pan or a bare charcoal grate over a two-zone fire both work. Greasing with beef suet is worth copying if you have it — it has a higher smoke point than butter and will not blacken the way butter does at searing heat.
- Thickness and doneness"A thick tender steak" is not defined; an inch to an inch and a half is a fair modern reading for a gridiron cut. Modern cooks should work to 125-130F for rare, 135F for medium-rare, 145F for medium, pulling the steak about 5F short and letting it carry over.
- The two methods are not the same steakThe first method turns once; the second, the searing-and-frequent-turning approach the author says "many prefer," is closer to current practice and gives a more evenly cooked interior. Turning every 30 to 60 seconds is a well-tested technique, not a nineteenth-century eccentricity.
- "Do not let butter become oily"This means: do not let the butter break and separate into clear fat. Hold the platter only just warm - warm enough to keep the meat hot, cool enough that the butter stays creamy rather than splitting - and keep the hold short, as the recipe does.
- Rest the meatThe recipe holds the steak warm over steam "for a few moments" without saying why; modern practice rests it for the sake of the juices. Five to ten minutes for a thick steak, and pour the collected platter juices back over at the table.
- Browned potato ballsThe garnish is potato scooped with a small melon baller — the recipe says "the size of a marble" — parboiled briefly and fried until golden. Reckon one large potato per two diners.
- YieldA single thick steak of about a pound and a half serves two generously, three at a stretch, with the potatoes.
Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping, the 1877 revision of The Centennial Buckeye Cook Book, published in Marysville, Ohio, in 1876, belongs to the great wave of American community cookbooks assembled from members' contributions, each contributor identified at the end only by initials. The gridiron this recipe assumes was standard equipment: a rack of parallel iron bars, sometimes with channels running to a collecting well, set over the coals of a wood or coal range with the top plates lifted off. Broiling in this sense meant cooking over the fire, not under it; the American shift of "broil" to mean overhead heat came later, with gas and electric ranges. The fuss about catching the juices on the platter and returning them to the meat reflects a period conviction, running through nineteenth-century cookery writing, that the "gravy" of a steak was its nourishment and that a good cook's job was to lose as little of it as possible — the same reasoning behind the era's insistence on searing to "seal in" the juices, a rationale since disproved even though the practice produces good steak for other reasons.