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Beef Steak En Casserole
Melt three table-spoonfuls of butter, add six onions cut in slices and cook until light brown. Put the onions into the casserole, rinsing it out with a little hot water. Cut two pounds of beef, taken from the top of the round, into pieces for serving and brown them in a hot omelet-pan. Put them on top of the onions in the casserole, with a sprig of parsley, salt and pepper and enough hot water to cover the onions. Cover and cook slowly for two hours or until nearly tender. Skim off the fat, add one cup of sliced potatoes which have been parboiled, and more seasoning if needed. Serve from casserole. Probable cost, 2s. 6d.
A straightforward braise of round steak on a bed of onions, written for a lidded earthenware pot rather than the shallow baking dish the word now suggests. Two details carry the dish: the onions must be genuinely browned, and the liquid must never come above a bare simmer.
- "Casserole" means the potIn this period a casserole is a deep lidded vessel of earthenware or enamelled iron, used on the stovetop or in a slow oven. A Dutch oven or heavy lidded braiser is the direct equivalent; a modern shallow casserole dish will not hold the liquid or the heat.
- Omelet-panA heavy, shallow, well-seasoned iron pan. Any heavy skillet that will take high heat works for browning the meat. Brown in batches so the pieces sear rather than steam.
- "Cook slowly"Keep the liquid at a bare shiver, not a rolling boil. On the stove that is the lowest steady setting. Round is lean and turns stringy if boiled hard.
- The cutTop of the round is a lean, dry cut that needs the full two hours. Chuck or blade will give a juicier result in the same time if you prefer it; the onions and the long braise are doing the same work either way.
- Rinsing out the panThe instruction to rinse the onion pan with hot water and add it to the pot is deglazing. Do the same with the meat pan after browning, or the best of the flavour stays behind.
- Liquid level"Enough hot water to cover the onions" depends on the width of the pot; a snug pot needs less. Stock rather than water is an obvious improvement and nothing in the method objects to it.
- PotatoesParboil until barely yielding, no further; they go in for the last stretch only and will collapse if given the whole two hours.
- Yield and costTwo pounds of beef serves four generously. The "probable cost, 2s. 6d." is pre-decimal British currency; a costed recipe of this kind let a cook judge the price of a dish, and the figure suggests an economical dinner.
The en casserole label attached itself to a great many English and American dishes around the turn of the twentieth century, when the covered earthenware pot came into fashion as both cooking vessel and serving dish, hence the closing instruction to "serve from casserole" -- a saving of washing-up as much as a matter of style. The method itself is much older and entirely unfashionable: a lean, cheap cut of beef, a heavy weight of onions, long slow moisture, and potatoes added late to stretch the meat. The priced-out cost at the end is characteristic of the Cassell's series, which addressed cooks working to a fixed weekly housekeeping allowance.