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Beefsteak Fried with Onions
Prepare the steak as for broiling, pepper and roll in flour and fry in lard; remove the steak from the pan when done; add to the gravy one chopped onion, pepper, salt, one-half teacup water, and a little mustard. Cook a few minutes, put the steak in the gravy-let it remain a short time; send to the table hot.--Mrs. P.W.
A pan-fried steak with a quick onion gravy built in the drippings. The method is sound; only the fat, the flour coating and the vague teacup need translating.
- "Prepare as for broiling"Broadly, a steak wiped dry, trimmed of ragged edges and pounded lightly if the cut is tough. The recipe gives no thickness or cut; a sirloin or a round steak both take this treatment.
- The flour is the pointPepper and flour first, then into hot fat. The coating is what browns and what later thickens the gravy, so shake off the excess but do not skip it. Salt goes into the gravy, not onto the meat here, which is why the steak alone tastes flat if you stop early.
- LardRoughly two tablespoons in a heavy skillet, heated until it shimmers. Bacon fat, beef tallow or a neutral oil all work; butter alone will burn at the heat this needs.
- A teacupPeriod American cookbooks generally treat a teacup as about three-quarters of a cup, so half a teacup is around 5 to 6 tablespoons. Add it gradually and judge by the consistency of the gravy rather than the measure.
- The mustard"A little" means about half a teaspoon of dry English mustard, or a teaspoon of prepared. It is there to cut the fat, not to be tasted as mustard.
- Don't overcook the return"A short time" is a minute or two, just enough to warm the steak and coat it. A steak left to sit in simmering gravy goes grey and tightens; if the meat was cooked to medium in the pan, it will be past medium-well by the time it comes out.
- Onions want longer than the steak doesA single raw chopped onion softens in a few minutes only if the pan is still hot and the pieces are small. Give it two or three minutes in the fat before the water goes in, or the gravy will taste sharp.
- YieldOne steak of about a pound serves two, with the gravy poured over. Double the onion and liquid if you cook two steaks in batches.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (first published 1878, with later printings), assembled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by some 250 Virginia housekeepers, prints recipes as their donors wrote them, initials and all -- hence "Mrs. P.W." The result is a book with several versions of the same dish and very few exact measurements, because the contributors were writing for cooks who already knew what a steak should look like when done. Frying steak in lard and then building a gravy from the browned flour left in the pan is the same logic that produces cream gravy and the later chicken-fried steak; the pan drippings were too valuable to waste, and flour plus liquid turned them into a sauce that stretched a modest cut across a table. The dash of mustard is a common nineteenth-century touch in beef gravies, generally traced to English cookery, where dry mustard was a standard pantry item long before bottled sauces were.