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RUMP STEAK, NEAPOLITAN (excellent)
Take two pounds of tender rump steak an inch and a half thick. Fry it in hot fat until it is brightly and equally browned, take it up, and in the same fat fry two thinly-sliced onions. Put the steak into an earthen dish, lay the onions upon it, pour over as much broth as will barely cover them, and add two pickled gherkins finely minced, two sticks of celery, four cloves, a little salt and cayenne, and a glassful of port or claret. Cover the pan closely, and put it in a moderately-heated oven till the steak is half cooked, then add a turnip and a carrot cut in halves. When these are sufficiently cooked, lift out the steak, lay it on a hot dish, strain the gravy over it, cut the carrot and turnip into dice, and sprinkle them upon it. Serve immediately. Time to bake the steak, two hours and a half. Probable cost, 3s. 8d., exclusive of the wine. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A braise dressed as a steak dish: the 2½-hour oven time tells you this is not a quick sear but a slow cook on a cut that needs it. A few of the terms and vessels need translating.
- The cutVictorian "rump steak" is a thick slab off the rump, roughly what a US butcher would call top sirloin; it was fried and grilled as well as braised. Buy it in one 2 lb piece about 1½ inches thick, as the recipe specifies, and avoid a thin steak, which will dry out over two hours.
- Oven temperatureA "moderately-heated oven" is usually read today as somewhere around 325-350F, though no exact equivalent exists for a coal range. For a braise this long the lower end is safer; the liquid should barely tremble, not boil.
- The vesselThe "earthen dish" and "pan" are one and the same: a lidded earthenware or cast-iron casserole. A Dutch oven or covered braiser does the job. Keep the lid tight, since the broth only barely covers the meat.
- A glassful of wineA Victorian wineglassful is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz, so read this as roughly 2-4 fl oz. Claret is red Bordeaux, or any dry red; port gives a sweeter, rounder gravy. Either goes in at the start with the broth.
- Gherkins and celeryThe pickled gherkins are the sharp counterweight to the port and the fried onion, so use proper vinegar-pickled cornichons rather than sweet pickle. The celery goes in as whole ribs and is discarded with the strained solids.
- Timing the vegetables"Half cooked" means roughly 1¼ hours in, when the turnip and carrot halves go in for the remaining hour or so. Added at the start they collapse into the gravy.
- The gravyStrained, the liquid will be thin. Reduce it hard in a wide pan for a few minutes while the steak rests, then taste for salt before it goes over the meat; the cayenne and cloves will have bloomed considerably over two hours.
- Yield and costFive or six servings, as stated, once the meat is carved across the grain in slices. The 3s. 8d. is a late-Victorian price and has no modern equivalent worth quoting.
Cassell's habit of attaching a place-name to a dish is a matter of style rather than geography, and "Neapolitan" here seems to signal little more than the presence of wine, onions and a long covered cook in the oven. What the recipe really shows is the English kitchen's way with second-quality beef in the later Victorian period: a hard sear in dripping to build colour, then broth, root vegetables and a glass of whatever fortified or red wine was in the house, all shut up in an earthenware casserole and left in the falling heat of a coal range for the afternoon. The pickled gherkin is the period detail most likely to surprise a modern cook, though bottled pickles and mushroom or walnut ketchups were standing sharpeners in Victorian gravies. The parenthetical "(excellent)" in the title is the compilers' own verdict, a common piece of shorthand in the dictionary's beef entries....