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Salt and Pepper (Half an ounce of Butter)
One pound of Rump Steak. One Turnip. Half an ounce of Butter.
Half an ounce of Flour.
Half a pint of Stock or Water.
Cut off the fat and skin from the steak. Melt the butter in a stewpan, and fry the steak a nice brown on both sides; add the flour and brown it; then add the vegetables, cut up into small pieces. Pour stock in with the steak, and stir till it boils, then draw the stewpan off the fire, and let it simmer gently for quite an hour.
Shred some carrot and turnip, and boil separately.
Take the fat of the steak, cut it into nice pieces, and cook it in the oven. When the steak is cooked, put it on a hot dish, season the gravy with pepper and salt, and strain it over the meat; place the pieces of fat on the meat, and garnish with the shredded vegetables.
This is a small brown braise of steak, and the printed page has clearly lost the top of its ingredient list — the steak itself and the vegetables are never quantified. Work backwards from the sauce: half an ounce each of butter and flour and half a pint of stock make roughly a cup of gravy, which suits about 1 to 1½ lb of steak serving two to three.
- The missing quantitiesOnly the butter, flour and liquid survive in the heading. Assume 1–1½ lb of braising steak and, for the flavouring vegetables, one onion, one carrot and a piece of turnip, with a second carrot and turnip held back for the shredded garnish.
- Imperial measuresHalf an ounce of butter is about a tablespoon, and half an ounce of flour a rounded tablespoon. Half an imperial pint is 10 fl oz, so scale up to 1¼ US cups rather than one.
- The hinge: fry, then flour, then brown the flourThe roux is built in the same pan after the meat has coloured, and the flour must be cooked to a nut brown before any stock goes in. Rush it and the gravy is pale and pasty; scorch it and the whole dish turns bitter.
- Cut of meat"Steak" here means stewing or braising steak — chuck, blade or skirt — not a grilling cut. An hour at a bare simmer will only toughen sirloin, while chuck begins to soften; give a thick piece of chuck 1½ to 2 hours and judge by feel rather than the clock.
- Simmer means barely moving"Draw the stewpan off the fire" is the direction that matters: the pan comes to the edge of the heat so the liquid trembles rather than bubbles. On a modern hob the lowest setting will do; a low oven of around 300F is a modern substitute, not something the recipe itself calls for.
- The pieces of fatThe trimmed fat is crisped in the oven and used as a garnish, much as crackling is. The recipe names no oven heat; a moderate oven of about 350F for 20–30 minutes on a shallow tray renders it to brown nuggets; pour off the liquid fat as it collects and keep it for frying.
- Shredded garnishCut the reserved carrot and turnip into fine julienne and boil them separately, in salted water, for 3–5 minutes only. Cooked with the meat for an hour they collapse; the point of doing them apart is colour and bite.
- Straining and seasoningThe braising vegetables have given everything to the gravy and are discarded with the strainer, so season only after straining — an hour of reduction concentrates whatever salt the stock brought with it.
The ingredients are listed as a block above the method, which is why this page begins mid-list with the butter and flour and no steak in sight. The dish itself is a plain brown braise: a little butter, a browned flour thickening, stock, and root vegetables used as flavouring and then thrown away. What marks it as "high class" rather than plain household cooking is the finish he second set of carrots and turnips cut fine and boiled apart for colour, and the trimmed fat crisped in the oven and set back on the meat, so that nothing from the joint is wasted but everything reaches the dish looking deliberate.