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Beef Steak
Let the steak be about three-quarters of an inch thick (rump, for broiling, is the best); rub the gridiron with a little fat to prevent the meat from sticking, and place it with the steak over a sharp clear fire--no smoke, of course; turn frequently with a knife or steak tongs, but do not prick the meat with a fork, as the gravy will escape and the meat become hard. Serve in a hot dish with a little mushroom ketchup, or other sauce or gravy at discretion, taking care to put a little butter first, melted over the steak, should it be a lean one. In any case it makes the steak look better. Probable cost, 1s. 3d. to 1s. 6d. per pound. Time, eight to ten minutes to broil. Half a pound to each person is considered sufficient. When purchasing steak it is well to remember that, when it can be afforded, rump steak or a piece from the undercut of the sirloin is best for broiling, for pies, for stewing, for beef-tea, indeed, for almost every purpose. When these are not to be had, chuck steak is the best for stewing, buttock steak for broiling, and steak from the bladebone or shoulder-piece for pies. The roll of the bladebone is admirably adapted for making beef-tea, and beef skirting yields very rich gravy.
A gridiron recipe that translates directly to a charcoal grill or a heavy ridged cast-iron pan taken to the edge of smoking. The cuts, the timing and the portion size all need adjusting.
- The hinge: heat and dryness"A sharp clear fire--no smoke" means a fire burned down to glowing coals with no flame and no smoke, i.e. very high radiant heat, whether coal or charcoal. Pat the steak completely dry before it goes on; any surface moisture steams rather than browns.
- Cuts, in modern termsBritish rump is roughly US top sirloin. The "undercut of the sirloin" is the fillet or tenderloin. Buttock steak is topside or round, bladebone and shoulder-piece are chuck and blade, and "beef skirting" is skirt steak. Chuck for stewing still holds; round for broiling does not, by current taste.
- TimingEight to ten minutes on a three-quarter-inch steak gives well-done meat. For medium-rare at that thickness, count roughly three minutes a side over very high heat and pull it at 130F internal.
- RestingThe book says nothing about it. Let the steak sit five minutes in the warm dish before serving; the juices the author is trying to protect from the fork are redistributed by resting far more effectively.
- The fork ruleTurning with tongs is still sound practice, though the idea that a fork prick drains the gravy is overstated. The real loss comes from overcooking and from cutting into the meat straight off the fire.
- Mushroom ketchupA thin, dark, salty mushroom extract, not a tomato sauce. Still sold by specialist grocers; Worcestershire sauce or a splash of reduced mushroom soaking liquid gives a similar savoury lift.
- PortionHalf a pound of raw steak per person is generous by current standards. Six to eight ounces is a normal serving, especially with a starch and vegetable alongside.
- The price1s. 3d. to 1s. 6d. per pound is pre-decimal sterling and tells you only that this was a comfortably middle-class purchase, not a cheap one, at the time the book was compiled.
Cassell's ran to hundreds of pages of alphabetical entries, and its treatment of beef is unusually detailed on which part of the animal suits which method. Broiling over a gridiron was the standard English treatment for good beef through the nineteenth century, and the beefsteak eaten plain with a little melted butter and a sharp bottled sauce was closely associated with the London chophouse and with beefsteak clubs, where the simplicity was part of the point. The closing paragraph on cuts is a reminder that Victorian households bought meat by the piece from a butcher; a cook may well have known that the roll of the bladebone made good beef-tea and that skirting gave rich gravy, economies of the kind often said to have helped stretch a household's meat budget.