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English Beefsteak Pie
Take a round steak, not too thick, cut it in narrow strips, then in short pieces, two inches in length. Do not use fat. Put these pieces of beef in the bottom of a four-pound butter crock, only enough to cover bottom of crock. Over this put a good sprinkling of sifted flour, salt and pepper and lastly lumps of good butter. Then put another layer of the pieces of beef, with the addition of the flour, salt, pepper and butter, and so continue until the meat is all in the crock with a generous sprinkling of flour, lumps of butter and salt and pepper on top. More than cover this with cold water, then a plate on top of crock, and place in the oven for four and a half or five hours, replenishing with hot water as it cooks down dry, as this will make a delicious and rich gravy to be served with the meat when cooked, poured over a hot shortcake or rich biscuit crust, split and cut in squares, placed on a deep hot platter. Pour the meat and gravy over this and serve hot. Some of the gravy can be reserved for the gravy boat if desired. There will be plenty of gravy if the meat is kept well covered with hot water while cooking. -Mrs Wilson B.
Chisholm.
Sweetbreads, Plain Let sweetbreads stand in cold water for thirty minutes. Remove membranes.
Cook in boiling salted water for twenty minutes and then put them in cold water to harden. Cut in small pieces, place either in chafing-dish or griddle, with large lump of butter, and cook until brown.-Mrs Dickson Moore.
A long, slow crock braise rather than a pie in the pastry sense: the "crust" is biscuit or shortcake, split and laid under the meat at the table. Two contributed recipes were run together on the page; notes on the sweetbreads follow at the end.
- The four-pound butter crockA stoneware crock sized to hold four pounds of butter, roughly two to two and a half quarts. Any deep, lidded ovenproof pot of that capacity works; a 3-quart Dutch oven is the closest modern equivalent, with the lid standing in for the plate.
- Oven temperatureNone is given, which is normal for a recipe written for a range the cook knew by feel. A braise held four to five hours without boiling dry wants a slow oven, 300F. At 350F the liquid will reduce faster than the schedule assumes.
- Cut of beefRound is lean and full of connective tissue, which is why the recipe runs so long and insists on trimming the fat. Chuck gives a richer result in less time; if you use round, do not shorten the cooking.
- The flour is the thickenerThere is no roux and no slurry. The flour dusted between layers is what turns the water into gravy, so sprinkle it evenly and do not stir the pot once it is assembled.
- Cooking timeFour and a half to five hours is not an exaggeration for lean round at a low temperature, but check at three hours. The meat is done when a piece falls apart under a fork; beyond that point it only dries.
- Topping upAdd hot water, not cold, and only enough to keep the meat covered. Cold water dropped into a hot crock can crack stoneware and stalls the braise.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. A crock of that capacity will not take much meat once room is left for water to more than cover it, so scale to the pot rather than to a stated weight. The biscuits or shortcake are baked separately and split just before serving.
- On the sweetbreadsThe second recipe is a separate contribution. Sweetbreads are now usually soaked several hours or overnight with changes of water rather than thirty minutes, and blanching followed by a cold-water plunge to firm them before browning is still standard, though modern cooking times are generally shorter than twenty minutes.
Beefsteak pie in England traditionally means seasoned stewing beef under a suet or short crust, baked together in one dish; this American version separates the two, cooking the meat alone in a crock for most of a day and serving it over split biscuit or shortcake in the manner of a Southern or Midwestern chicken-and-biscuit supper. The butter crock as a baking vessel says a good deal about the period kitchen: heavy stoneware held for storing butter, lard and pickles was pressed into service for anything that needed hours of steady, gentle heat, and a plate served perfectly well as a lid. Both recipes here carry a contributor's name, as was common in reader-contributed and community cookbooks of the period.