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Beefsteak a la Henriette
1/2 cup butter Yolks 3 eggs 1 tablespoon cold water 1/2 tablespoon lemon juice 1/4 teaspoon salt 2 tablespoons tomato puree 1 tablespoon Worcestershire Sauce 1/2 tablespoon finely chopped parsley Few grains cayenne Wash butter, and divide in three pieces. Put one piece in saucepan with yolks of eggs slightly beaten and mixed with water and lemon juice. Proceed same as in making Hollandaise Sauce I; then add tomato, parsley, and seasonings. Pour one-half sauce on a serving dish, lay a broiled porterhouse steak on sauce, and cover steak with remaining sauce. Garnish with parsley.
The ingredient list is the sauce only; the steak itself is assumed. What you are making is a hollandaise built by the piece-by-piece butter method, then flavoured with tomato and Worcestershire.
- The hinge: keep the eggs below curdling pointBuild the sauce in a double boiler or a bowl over barely steaming water, never over direct heat, and take it off the moment it thickens to coat a spoon. If it begins to break, whisk in a teaspoon of cold water off the heat; if it goes fully granular, start a fresh yolk in a clean bowl and whisk the broken sauce into it drop by drop.
- "Wash butter"An older step for salted, farm-churned butter: the butter was worked under cold water to rinse out excess salt and buttermilk, which shortened its keeping and made seasoning unpredictable. With modern unsalted butter it is unnecessary. Use 1/2 cup (4 oz / 115 g) unsalted butter, well chilled and cut in three pieces.
- The three-piece methodFirst piece in with the yolks from the start, the second and third whisked in in turn as the mixture warms and thickens, all of it over hot water rather than direct heat. It is a deliberately slow, forgiving version of hollandaise, and it works better than pouring in melted butter if you have no blender.
- Tomato pureeIn this period the term means thick cooked and sieved tomato pulp, closer to what is sold as passata reduced down, not the concentrated double-strength paste in a tube. Two tablespoons of modern tomato paste would overpower the sauce; use about two tablespoons of thick, plain tomato sauce, or one scant teaspoon of paste loosened with water.
- WorcestershireA full tablespoon is assertive in a sauce this size and will push it noticeably darker and saltier. Add half, taste, then decide, particularly since the sauce already carries 1/4 teaspoon salt and Worcestershire brands vary in strength.
- The steakThe recipe gives no size or doneness. A porterhouse proportioned to this quantity of sauce would be somewhere in the region of 1 1/2 to 2 lb, cut around 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 inches thick, broiled hard and rested a few minutes; 130-135F internal is the usual modern guide for medium rare. On that basis the sauce would stretch to two or three servings.
- Warm the platterHalf the sauce goes under the steak, so a cold serving dish will chill it into a paste and cool the meat. Warm the platter gently, but keep it well under the point where the sauce would split, and dress the steak just before it goes to the table.
- Resting juicesRest the steak on a board rather than on the platter, or the meat juices will thin the sauce beneath it into a pink puddle. Add any collected juices to the sauce if you want them.