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Italian Steak
Take two or three pounds of steak from the rump or fillet--let it be quite an inch and a half in thickness. Brown it in a stewpan with two or three ounces of butter, turning it frequently over a quick fire. When brown alike on both sides, remove the steak to a baking-pan, with a tight-fitting lid (earthenware pans are always used for this purpose on the Continent), and fry two medium-sized onions, sliced, a shallot, minced, and a bunch of parsley in the same butter. Spread this over the steak in the pan. Add two large wine-glassfuls of port, and two breakfast-cupfuls of stock, with a root of celery cut into pieces, two pickled gherkins, four or five cloves, a pinch of cayenne pepper, and salt to taste. Cover down the lid tight, that no steam may escape, and let it bake in the oven nearly an hour and a half, when put in a turnup and a carrot, whole, and close as before. If the roots are young they will be done in half an hour. Cut them into dice, and lay them over the top of the steak, which should be placed on a hot dish. Send to table with the gravy strained over. Probable cost, 1s. 4d. per pound.
This is a long, tightly covered braise rather than a steak in the modern sense, and the original gives no oven temperature. Everything else follows from treating it as a pot roast.
- Oven temperatureThe original gives no oven temperature. For the specified hour and a half plus a further half hour, something in the range of 300-325F suits; anything hotter will boil the liquid hard and squeeze the meat dry before the connective tissue softens.
- Choose rump, not filletThe original offers either, but fillet has little connective tissue and tends to go grey and grainy over two hours of moist heat. A thick rump, or chuck or top blade, is what this method rewards.
- The seal is the point"Cover down the lid tight, that no steam may escape" is the hinge of the recipe. If your lid is loose, lay parchment or foil over the pan before the lid goes on; the small amount of liquid is meant to be recycled as steam, not reduced away.
- Wine-glassful and breakfast-cupfulA Victorian wine-glass is about 2 fl oz, so two glasses of port is roughly 1/2 cup. A breakfast cup is 8-10 fl oz, so two cupfuls of stock is about 2 cups. Together that is a shallow braising liquid, not a submersion.
- Earthenware panThe Continental earthenware vessel described here is a lidded braising pot. A Dutch oven or heavy lidded casserole does the same job; if you use unglazed earthenware, put it into a cold oven rather than a hot one.
- Root of celeryThis most likely means celeriac rather than a head of celery, though the phrase can also be read as the root end of a celery head. One small bulb, peeled and cut into chunks, is about right; celery stalks will give the flavour but dissolve.
- Turnup and carrot"Turnup" is turnip. Both go in whole so they hold shape for the final dicing, and half an hour suits genuinely young roots only. Supermarket turnips and large carrots will want 40-50 minutes, and should be tested rather than timed.
- Gherkins and portTwo pickled gherkins and four or five cloves are assertive in this quantity of liquid, and the port is sweet; taste the strained gravy before serving and add a little vinegar if the port dominates.
- YieldTwo to three pounds of braised steak with roots serves four to six. The strained gravy will be thin by modern habit; reduce it briskly in a wide pan while the meat rests if you want body.
Cassell's, like many late-Victorian English compilations, used national labels loosely: "Italian" here signals nothing more specific than a Continental method, and the parenthetical note about earthenware pans being "always used for this purpose on the Continent" is the real tell. The dish itself is a stufato in outline -- meat browned in butter, buried under onion and herbs, sealed and left to cook slowly -- but the port, the pickled gherkins and the whole turnip look like English additions, of a piece with the mid-century British taste for fortified wine in gravy. The costing in shillings and pence at the end is a standing feature of the book, which was written for households keeping accounts and needing to know before they began what a joint would come to per pound. That an inch-and-a-half steak was expected to spend two hours in a sealed pot is a useful reminder that "steak" in this period meant a thick cut off the animal, not something to be seared and served pink.