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Porterhouse Steak
A porterhouse steak is cut from the sirloin, about an inch and a half thick, and includes the undercut as well as the topcut. Cut two ounces of fat bacon into long narrow strips, and lard the steak with them on one side only. Take a carrot, a turnip, and an onion, cut them into pieces about a quarter of an inch long, place them in a pie-dish with some dripping, and pepper and salt; then lay the steak on the vegetables, the larded side up, pour a little water in, then bake for three-quarters of an hour. Take up the steak and put it on a hot dish, mix a tea-spoonful of Bovril with the gravy and strain it over the steak. Garnish with the vegetables, and serve. The steak is also frequently grilled in the ordinary way. Probable cost, 4s.
A Victorian oven-braise of a thick steak on a bed of root vegetables, finished with a spoonful of Bovril in the pan juices. The instructions assume a butcher who will cut and lard to order.
- What the cut isCassell's describes the steak as cut across the sirloin so that it takes in both the topcut (strip loin) and the undercut (fillet) — what an American butcher sells as a porterhouse or T-bone. Ask for a bone-in porterhouse about 1 1/2 inches thick, roughly 1 1/2 to 2 lb, which serves two or three..
- LardingLarding means threading strips of fat through the surface of the meat with a larding needle, not laying them on top. Two ounces of fat bacon cut into narrow lardons is about two thick rashers. If you have no larding needle, pierce the meat with a thin knife and push the strips in with the back of a skewer.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given because the book predates oven dials. "Bake" in this context is a moderate oven, 350F/175C.
- Pie-dishA Victorian pie-dish is an oval earthenware baking dish two to three inches deep, not a pie plate. Any shallow braising dish or roasting tin that holds the vegetables in a single layer will do.
- DrippingBeef dripping, the strained fat from a roast. A tablespoon or two of any beef fat, lard or oil substitutes without changing the dish.
- BovrilStill made, and still the point of the sauce: a concentrated beef extract that turns thin pan liquid into gravy. A teaspoon of any beef stock concentrate or a scant teaspoon of Marmite-style yeast extract does the same work. Add it off the heat and taste before adding more — it is very salty.
- The timingThree-quarters of an hour at 350F on a bed of vegetables will bring this steak well past medium — it is a braise, and the recipe expects meat cooked through. If you want the interior pink, pull it at 130-135F internal, which on a 1 1/2-inch steak will be closer to 25-30 minutes, and give the vegetables a 15-minute head start in the oven.
- Strain, then garnishThe gravy is strained over the meat and the cooked vegetables arranged around it, so cut them neatly — quarter-inch dice as written, or slightly larger batons if you want them to hold their shape through the full baking time.
- The cost"Probable cost, 4s." is four shillings, a household budgeting note of the kind Cassell's attached to most entries.
The name is generally traced to the American porterhouse — a nineteenth-century chophouse or tavern serving porter, the dark beer, where a large loin steak was the standing dish; several New York establishments have been claimed as the origin, none conclusively. By the time Cassell's compiled this dictionary the term had crossed back into British use as a way of specifying a sirloin cut thick enough to include the undercut. What places the entry after a certain point is the Bovril: the beef extract was developed in the 1870s and 1880s and by the turn of the century is said to have served as a shortcut in British kitchens for giving body and colour to a thin gravy, appearing in cookery books wherever an older recipe would have called for a long-simmered stock or glaze. The note of probable cost belongs to the same impulse — these dictionaries were written for households running to a budget, where knowing that a dish came to four shillings mattered as much as knowing how to lard it.