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Rump Steak, Broiled, with Onion Gravy
Put two Spanish onions, sliced, into a sauce-pan with half a table-spoonful of stock or water. Let them stew gently until the liquor has boiled away and they are a little coloured, then pour over them half a pint of stock and a seasoning of pepper and salt, and simmer till tender. Lift them out of the gravy, mince finely, then return them to the gravy. Add a table-spoonful of mushroom ketchup, and boil the gravy for five minutes. Pour the gravy on a hot dish, lay a broiled steak upon it (see BEEF STEAK, RUMP), and serve hot. Time to make the gravy, about half an hour.
A straightforward onion gravy for a grilled steak, with one instruction in the original that will scorch a pan if taken literally.
- The half tablespoon of liquidTwo large onions will not stew in half a tablespoon of stock without catching. The intent is a near-dry sweat in a covered pan over low heat so the onions colour in their own moisture; add a splash more liquid whenever the pan looks dry, or start with a knob of butter or beef dripping.
- Spanish onionsLarge, mild, pale-skinned onions — the modern supermarket "Spanish" or a large yellow onion is the same thing. Two of them come to roughly 1 to 1 1/4 lb peeled, which is a generous amount for one steak's worth of gravy.
- Half a pintAn imperial half pint is 10 fl oz, about 1 1/4 US cups. Cassell's is a British book throughout, so read all its pints as 20 fl oz.
- Mushroom ketchupNot tomato ketchup but a thin, dark, salty mushroom extract, still sold in Britain and closer in character to Worcestershire sauce or a splash of soy plus a little vinegar. It is doing the work of umami and colour here; without it the gravy tastes flat.
- Mincing after simmeringLifting the softened onions out and chopping them fine, then returning them, gives a thick-textured gravy rather than a smooth sauce. A few pulses in a food processor will do the same job faster, but stop well short of a puree, which is not what the method is after.
- Broiling the steak"Broiled" in Victorian British usage means grilled over or under direct heat, not oven-roasted. A rump steak of about an inch takes roughly 3-4 minutes a side for medium-rare on a very hot grill or ridged pan; rest it five minutes before it goes on the gravy.
- Order of assemblyThe gravy goes on the dish first and the steak sits on top, so the meat's surface stays dry and the resting juices run down into the sauce. Have the dish and the gravy hot before the steak comes off the heat.
- YieldThe quantity of gravy suits two to three steaks, though the recipe as written serves one. Leftover gravy reheats well.
Onion gravy with a grilled steak belongs to the plainest end of Victorian chophouse cooking, where a good cut of beef was expected to be handled simply and any elaboration came alongside it in a sauceboat. Rump was a cheaper cut than fillet, well flavoured and forgiving under a fierce grill. The mushroom ketchup is the period marker: bottled mushroom and walnut ketchups were staples of the nineteenth-century store cupboard, predating tomato ketchup's dominance and used much as cooks now reach for Worcestershire sauce or stock concentrate.