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Rump Steaks, Gravy For
Pour the fat out of the pan, dredge the pan with flour, let it brown a little, and then put into it one ounce of butter; rub and mix the butter and flour well together in the pan, and when it is a little brown reduce it to the thickness of cream, by mixing gradually with it a little boiling water, a table-spoonful of ketchup, and half a tea-spoonful of pepper, and salt to taste; keep stirring the sauce well till it boils for a minute or two, and then pour it over the steaks through a sieve. The steaks may be garnished with a few sprigs of parsley, or with scraped horse-radish: they are mostly served up without any other sauce than the above, but some families eat them with oyster or mushroom sauce.
A pan gravy built in the steak pan, of the kind that assumes a cast-iron skillet still hot from the fire. The method is sound; only the vocabulary needs translating.
- Ketchup is not tomato ketchupIn a British book of this date, an unqualified "ketchup" means mushroom ketchup, or occasionally walnut — a thin, dark, salty, intensely savoury liquid closer to a mushroom-based Worcestershire than to anything sweet. Modern tomato ketchup will make the gravy sugary and pink. Mushroom ketchup is still sold; a tablespoon of Worcestershire or a teaspoon of soy plus a little mushroom stock stands in.
- Dredge the panScatter roughly a tablespoon of flour over the hot pan after the fat is poured off, and let it toast in the residual fat and browned meat juices before the butter goes in. This is the hinge of the recipe: the flour must colour, or the gravy tastes raw and pasty. One ounce of butter is about 30 g, two tablespoons.
- "Thickness of cream"Single cream, or what Americans call light cream — pourable, coating the back of a spoon but not clinging. The recipe gives no quantity of water or of flour, so add the boiling water in small amounts, beating smooth each time, and stop when the sauce pours like cream.
- Boiling water, specificallyThe recipe calls for boiling water added gradually; keep a kettle at the boil and add it a little at a time, beating smooth. Beef stock in place of water makes a considerably better gravy and costs nothing in method.
- StrainingPassing the sauce through a sieve onto the steaks catches lumps and any burnt fragments scraped up from the pan. Worth doing even if the sauce looks smooth.
- Boiling timeA minute or two of hard boiling is not decoration — it cooks out the floury taste and sets the final thickness. The sauce will tighten slightly as it boils, so judge the consistency at the end rather than the beginning.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; the quantities are pegged only to one ounce of butter and whatever flour the pan takes. Judge the amount by the number of steaks and adjust the water to suit.
- The alternative saucesOyster and mushroom sauces were familiar accompaniments to grilled and fried beef, though the recipe presents them as what 'some families' do rather than the norm; both were commonly made as sauces enriched with the respective liquor. Scraped horseradish, mentioned as a garnish, is fresh root shaved into shreds rather than the creamed jar.
Pan gravy was a routine matter in a Victorian household: the steak was the point, and the sauce was simply what you did with the pan afterwards so that nothing was wasted. The casual reference to "ketchup" is a useful period marker — through most of the 1800s in Britain the word still meant a fermented mushroom or walnut liquor used as a seasoning, and the tomato version that displaced it was only beginning its rise. The closing line, that "some families eat them with oyster or mushroom sauce," is characteristic of the genre: the compiler records household variation without ruling on it.