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Beef, Fried Rump Steak
Cut the steak rather thinner than for broiling, and with a little fat. Put it into a hot pan of clarified butter or dripping, and turn frequently until done. Serve in about eight or ten minutes, seasoned with salt, pepper, and a little mushroom ketchup; or with a gravy made in the frying-pan and seasoned with Harvey's sauce, or according to taste. Probable cost, 1s. 4d. per pound.
A plain Victorian pan-fried steak, and the instructions hold up better than they look — frequent turning is now understood to cook a thin steak more evenly, not less. The parts needing translation are the fats, the bottled sauces and the cut itself.
- The cutBritish rump is the American top sirloin — a firm, well-flavoured steak from the hip, not the tenderloin. Cut "rather thinner than for broiling" means about 1/2 to 3/4 inch; anything thicker will not cook through in the eight to ten minutes given.
- Turn frequentlyRepeated flipping, every 20-30 seconds, keeps the surface hot enough to brown while the interior heats more gently and evenly, which suits a thin steak better than one long sear per side.
- Dripping and clarified butterBoth work well because their smoke points are high — the milk solids have been removed from the butter, and beef dripping is nearly pure fat. Whole butter in a hot pan will blacken before the steak colours. Beef dripping is sold in British supermarkets; clarified butter or ghee is the everyday substitute.
- Mushroom ketchupNot tomato ketchup. This was a thin, dark, salty liquid of salted mushrooms pressed and spiced — essentially a fermented umami seasoning closer to soy or Worcestershire than to anything sweet. It is still made commercially in Britain; soy sauce or Worcestershire stands in reasonably.
- Harvey's sauceA commercial bottled sauce of the period, anchovy-based with soy, vinegar, garlic and spice. It is no longer widely available; Worcestershire sauce is the nearest surviving equivalent and works in the same quantity — a teaspoon or two, no more.
- The pan gravyLift the steak out, pour off most of the fat, and deglaze the fond with a splash of stock, water or red wine, scraping hard. Season off the heat. It should take under two minutes and reduce to a few spoonfuls, not a sauce you could ladle.
- Doneness and restingThe book gives no internal temperature. For rump, 130-135F takes it to medium rare; past 145F it toughens noticeably. Rest five minutes before serving — a step Victorian recipes rarely mention.
- Yield and cost1s. 4d. per pound was a typical price for steak in the period. Allow 6-8 oz of steak per person.
Cassell's gives this among its plain frying instructions at a time when broiling over an open coal fire was still widely considered the proper treatment for a good steak. The two seasonings named tell you most about the era: mushroom ketchup and Harvey's sauce were both fixtures of the Victorian sideboard, part of a large family of bottled savoury sauces — Harvey's, Reading, Worcestershire, walnut and mushroom ketchups — that supplied depth and salt to English cooking before commercial stock cubes existed. Rump was well flavoured but needed to be cut thin and cooked quickly to stay tender, which is what this entry prescribes.