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Beef Steak Pie
Take a pie-dish according to the size required; two pounds of fresh rump steak cut into long thin strips will make a good pie; lay out the strips with a small piece of fat on each, a seasoning of salt and pepper, and a dust of flour; two tea-spoonfuls of salt and one of pepper will be sufficient for the whole pie; roll up each strip neatly and lay it in the dish, and between each layer sprinkle a little of the seasoning and flour; a shred onion or shallot is sometimes liked, and a few oysters will be a great improvement; put an edging of paste round the dish, throw in water enough to cover the rolls of meat, and lay a crust of about half an inch thick over all; ornament the top tastefully, and bake for two hours in a moderate oven. Cost of steak, 1s. 3d. to 1s. 6d. per pound. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A plain Victorian raised-liquid beef pie. Two things decide whether it works: the cut of beef and how you handle the filling liquid under a sealed crust.
- The cutBritish "rump steak" is a frying cut, and in two hours of moist baking it will be dry and stringy. Use chuck, blade or shin (braising steak) cut into the same long thin strips; it is the collagen in those cuts that gives the gravy body.
- Moderate ovenRead this as 350F/180C. If the pastry is colouring before the meat is tender, drop to 325F/165C and lay a sheet of foil loosely over the top for the last half hour.
- Paste and crust thickness"Paste" is pastry — shortcrust or a rough puff. The "edging of paste round the dish" is a collar of pastry pressed onto the wetted rim so the lid has something to grip. Half an inch is thicker than modern taste wants; a quarter inch bakes through properly.
- The liquidWater enough to cover the rolls will boil hard under a sealed lid and can lift or split the crust. Fill to about three-quarters the depth of the meat, use beef stock rather than water, and cut a vent in the centre of the lid before it goes in.
- OystersOysters were cheap and plentiful for much of the century and were often used to eke out meat, though this recipe presents them as an improvement rather than a filler. After two hours they will be rubbery. If you want the flavour, tuck them in among the beef and accept that they cook to nothing, or leave them out and add a splash of their liquor to the stock instead.
- The fat on each stripA scrap of beef suet or hard fat trimming, laid on so it bastes the meat as it renders. Ordinary fat trimmings from the braising steak do the same job.
- SeasoningTwo teaspoons of salt and one of pepper for two pounds of beef plus gravy is on the assertive side but not wrong; if using salted stock, halve the salt.
- Yield and the pricesFour to five as written. The costs are pre-decimal sterling — 1s. 3d. is fifteen old pence a pound — and are useful only as a period marker.
The beefsteak pie is one of the fixed points of British domestic cooking, and Cassell's gives it here in a plain form: the meat flour-dusted so it thickens its own gravy, and water rather than stock. The suggestion that oysters are "a great improvement" belongs to a period when oysters were dredged in large quantities from English beds and sold cheaply, and were commonly used to eke out beef in pies and puddings; by the later nineteenth century overfishing and pollution had driven prices up and the pairing survived mainly as tradition.