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VIENNA STEAKS (another way)
Take a pound and a half of rather lean beef or veal, trim off all the gristle and chop the meat very finely; add salt and pepper to taste, a little minced onion or shallot, a tea-spoonful of mixed sweet herbs, and two well-beaten eggs. Form into steaks, and fry slowly in butter until thoroughly cooked. Serve on a hot dish with mashed potatoes or peas in the centre, and brown gravy in a tureen.
A plain minced-meat patty of the type Cassell's groups with the beefsteak family. The only real difficulty is that the original assumes you are mincing the meat yourself, which changes the texture considerably.
- Chop, don't buy pre-groundHand-chopping 1 1/2 lb of trimmed chuck or veal shoulder gives a loose, juicy patty quite unlike supermarket mince. If you use a food processor, pulse the chilled meat in short bursts rather than running it, or it turns to paste.
- Two eggs is a lotTwo eggs is generous -- Two well-beaten eggs to 1 1/2 lb of meat gives a soft, loose mixture that firms as it cooks. Chill the shaped patties for 20 minutes before frying so they hold together in the pan.
- "Mixed sweet herbs"Victorian dried blends commonly drew on parsley, thyme, marjoram and savory, though the mix varied. A teaspoon of dried mixed herbs works, or use about a tablespoon of the same herbs chopped fresh.
- Fry slowly, and check the middle"Thoroughly cooked" over gentle heat means roughly 6-8 minutes a side for patties about 3/4 inch thick. Because the meat is minced, take it to 160F/71C internally rather than judging by colour.
- Butter alone will scorchAt the low heat specified butter is fine, but add a spoonful of oil or use clarified butter if your pan runs hot, since the milk solids brown well before the patties are done.
- The serving arrangementPeas or mashed potato "in the centre" means the patties are ringed around the vegetable on a single hot platter, with the brown gravy sent to table separately in a tureen.
- Yield1 1/2 lb of meat makes six patties of a modern size, serving four to six.
Vienna steak is a British name, attested from the later nineteenth century onward, for a fried patty of finely chopped beef or veal — the same idea that travelled under other city names, Hamburg steak among them, as Central European cooking filtered into English and American kitchens. The naming arguably reflects what may have been a Victorian habit of borrowing a continental city to dignify a cheap dish: what is being sold here is a way to use lean but tough cuts, with gristle trimmed and the meat reduced by hand chopping to something tender. The egg binding and the ring of mashed potato are both marks of the period's economical cookery, where a modest amount of meat was stretched and presented as a complete course.