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Beef Steak, Rump
A good rump steak should be about three-quarters of an inch thick, and cut from meat that has hung for a few days to make it tender. Pare away the sinew, trim it neatly, brush it over with oil, season well with pepper, and put it on a heated gridiron, the bars of which have been rubbed with good fat or suet to keep the steak from adhering to them. Be sure the fire is clear before commencing to broil; turn the steak often. In from eight to ten minutes one of ordinary thickness will be done enough. Have ready a very hot dish on which a shallot, or onion, if preferred, has been rubbed thoroughly to extract the juice. Slightly warm a tablespoonful of mushroom ketchup or other beef sauce, and dish up the meat quickly with some butter on the top, and seasoned with pepper and salt. Use quite fresh butter, or it will spoil the flavour of the steak; and garnish the dish with horse-radish grated. Oyster, onion, or any other sauce liked may be served with it. Probable cost, 1s. 4d. per pound.
A straightforward broiled steak, with the period's usual assumption of a coal fire and an unsalted steak. Two things need translating: the heat source, and the deliberate withholding of salt until the end.
- The gridiron, in practiceA gridiron over clear coals is a grill; the modern equivalent is a very hot ridged cast-iron grill pan or a charcoal grill burned down to glowing embers with no flame. "Be sure the fire is clear" means no smoke and no flaring — smoke from raw coal or from dripping fat will taint the meat, which is why the instruction comes before anything else.
- Salt at the end, not the startNote that the steak is seasoned only with pepper before cooking and salted after. Period cookery books frequently advise this, the reasoning usually given being that salt draws out the juices. Modern cooks generally salt in advance or immediately before; either works, but if you follow the recipe as written, be sure to salt the finished steak or it will taste flat.
- Thickness and timingThree-quarters of an inch is thinner than most steaks sold today. Eight to ten minutes with frequent turning gives roughly medium at that thickness over serious heat. A modern 1½-inch steak needs considerably longer, or finishing in a 400F oven; judge by an internal temperature of 130–135F for medium-rare rather than by the clock.
- "Meat that has hung for a few days"Butchers then hung carcasses as a matter of course. Supermarket beef is usually wet-aged in vacuum packaging, which tenderises but does not concentrate flavour the same way. Dry-aged rump or sirloin from a butcher is the nearest thing to what this recipe assumes.
- Mushroom ketchupNot tomato ketchup — a thin, dark, salty mushroom extract, still sold in Britain and worth seeking out. Worcestershire sauce or a good mushroom soy is the closest everyday substitute, used sparingly, as the original tablespoonful is meant to season rather than sauce the meat.
- Rubbing the dish with shallotThis is a flavouring technique, not a garnish: cut a shallot and rub the cut face hard over the hot serving platter so the juice scorches slightly and perfumes the resting meat. It does real work, and the residual heat of the dish matters — warm the platter properly.
- Fresh butter"Quite fresh butter" is a warning against the lightly rancid or heavily salted butter common in the period. Use good unsalted butter; a knob melting over the steak while it rests is the whole point.
- Yield and costThe recipe describes one steak, serving one generously or two modestly. The "probable cost, 1s. 4d. per pound" is a price index for the original readers, not an instruction, and reflects rump's place as a mid-priced cut.
Cassell's dictionary belongs to the great age of the English broiled steak, when a plain rump steak from a clear fire was regarded as a test of a cook rather than an easy dinner — chophouses and taverns built their reputations on little else. Rump, cut from the hindquarter above the round, was prized for flavour and priced below fillet, which is why it dominates Victorian steak entries; the frequent turning and the greased bars are specific answers to the problems of an open coal grate, where fat dripping onto live coals meant smoke and flare. The accompaniments here are equally of their moment: mushroom ketchup, grated horseradish and oyster sauce were the standard English relishes for beef long before bottled tomato ketchup displaced them, and the dish is rubbed with shallot before the steak is laid in it.