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Beefsteak and Potatoes
Cut up in a stewpan, with cold water, and stew till well cooked, the steak you will use; mash some potatoes with creamed butter, pepper and salt. Line a baking dish with it and put in the steak, seasoning with butter, pepper, and salt. Bake a little while.
A one-crust meat pie with mashed potato standing in for pastry, written in the shorthand of a cook who already knew what she was doing. The gaps worth filling are the cut of beef, the liquid, and the oven.
- The hinge: drain and reduceStewing the beef in water gives you meat plus a thin broth. Lift the meat out and boil the liquid down to a few spoonfuls of concentrated gravy before it goes into the dish, or the potato lining turns to sludge in the oven.
- "Steak" here is a stewing cutA cut destined for the stewpan in a book of this date is most likely round, rump or chuck rather than a tender grilling steak. Chuck cut into 1-inch pieces is the practical choice; a modern ribeye simmered in water is money wasted.
- "Stew till well cooked"On a low simmer, chuck needs 1 1/2 to 2 hours to become genuinely tender. Cover the pan and keep it barely bubbling; a hard boil tightens the fibres before the collagen has time to soften.
- Cold water startWhatever the intent behind it, beginning in cold water draws more soluble protein and gelatin into the liquid, which is what makes the reduced broth worth keeping.
- Creamed butterButter beaten soft until pale, then worked into the hot potatoes. Softened butter, not melted; use about 3 tablespoons per 2 lb of potatoes, plus a little milk or cream if the mash is stiff.
- Lining the dishSpread the mash roughly 1/2 inch thick over the bottom and sides. The recipe says nothing about a top; if you want one, leave enough mash back to cap it and score the surface with a fork so it browns in ridges.
- "Bake a little while"Everything in the dish is already cooked, so this is only about heating through and colouring the potato. 400F for 20 to 25 minutes, until the top is browned and the gravy shows at the edges.
- YieldAbout 1 1/2 lb of stewing beef and 2 lb of potatoes fills a 9-inch dish and serves four to six.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1877), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by Virginia housekeepers, is full of these compressed one-paragraph recipes, written cook-to-cook with the obvious left out. The dish itself belongs to the broad family of potato-topped meat pies that English cookery had been producing since mashed potato became cheap and common, and which is generally traced to the thrifty reuse of yesterday's joint; "shepherd's pie" and "cottage pie" are the names that stuck in Britain, the latter recorded as early as the 1790s. What distinguishes this version is that the beef is stewed fresh rather than salvaged from a roast, and that the potato lines the dish.