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Pepper and Salt (Cut the beef into neat fillets)
Cut the beef into neat fillets, cook them on a gridiron, sprinkling a little pepper and salt on each fillet. When cooked, glaze them nicely and dish them up round mashed potato, putting a small piece of cooked fat on each fillet, and some grated horse-radish. Fry the onions in the butter put them in the centre of the fillets, pour round some good gravy, and serve very hot.
The recipe as printed assumes an ingredient list that isn't reproduced here, so quantities are up to the cook. Everything else is straightforward grill work dressed up as an entrée.
- GridironA gridiron is a set of iron bars over open coals — the direct equivalent is a very hot ridged grill pan, an outdoor grill, or an overhead broiler. The point is fierce radiant heat and a short cook, not a covered pan.
- "Neat fillets"Trimmed, evenly shaped pieces of beef; the term is most often read as steaks cut from the fillet, though the recipe does not specify a cut. An inch to an inch and a half thick is a workable thickness. Aim for 125-130F internal for medium rare and rest them while the garnish is assembled.
- "Glaze them nicely"Glaze here means glace de viande — brown stock reduced until it is syrupy and sets to a jelly when cold — brushed over the meat for gloss. A heavily reduced beef stock or a spoonful of demi-glace does the same job; commercial glace products are sold in tubs.
- The piece of cooked fatA small square of beef suet or rendered fat from the joint, set on the hot steak so it melts down over it. Marrow from a roasted bone is a more palatable modern substitute, and a knob of maitre d'hotel butter will serve the same purpose.
- HorseradishFreshly grated root, not the creamed sauce in a jar. Grate it shortly before serving; the pungency is volatile and dulls fairly quickly once the root is exposed to air.
- The mashed potato borderThe fillets are ranged round the potato, so the mash is likely shaped as a base or border rather than a scoop. A stiff, dry mash holds its shape best; it can be piped through a star tube and browned briefly under the grill if you want colour.
- The onionsNo quantity is given. Two medium onions, sliced thin and fried slowly in butter until deep gold, will fill the centre of a dish for four. They want to be soft and sweet, not crisped.
- Order of workHave the mash piped, the onions fried, the gravy hot and the horseradish grated before the steaks go on. The dish is served very hot, and the grilling should be the last thing done.
- YieldImpossible to fix, since no quantity of beef is given; the number served depends entirely on how many fillets are ranged round the potato.
The title is the whole conceit: a grilled fillet seasoned with nothing but pepper and salt, then dressed up with the standard Victorian grill-room accompaniments — glaze, horseradish, fried onions, a border of piped potato and a pool of gravy. It is an assembly of a familiar kind: a plainly cooked piece of meat presented as a formal entrée through garnish and dishing-up rather than through sauce work. The beef-and-horseradish pairing is much older and is generally traced to the English habit of serving grated horseradish with roast and boiled beef, recorded well before this book was written. The glaze, by contrast, is French kitchen practice — glace de viande, the reduction of brown stock to a jelly, kept in a pot at the side of the range and brushed on for shine at the moment of serving.