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Swiss Steak
Salt and pepper Some flour 1/2 pint (I cup) boiling water 2 tablespoonfuls dripping or butter The steak should be cut two inches thick. Pound into it, using a steak shredder, as much flour as it will hold.
Melt the butter in a casserole, and when it is hot brown the steak in it, turning it over.
Add the onion, carrot, turnip, and tomato sliced and fry them for a few minutes, then add the bay leaf and seasoning of salt and pepper. Pour in the boiling water, put on the cover, and simmer for two hours.
A straightforward braise, but the printed ingredient list is incomplete: the method calls for onion, carrot, turnip, tomato and a bay leaf that never appear above it. Assemble those before you start.
- The missing vegetablesThe recipe gives no quantities; one medium onion, one carrot, a small turnip, one or two tomatoes and a single bay leaf are a reasonable reading. All are sliced and go in after the meat has browned.
- "Casserole" means the potHere the casserole is used on direct heat: the butter is melted and the steak browned in it before it is covered and simmered. A Dutch oven or a heavy enameled cast-iron pot is the direct equivalent; a modern ceramic baking dish will crack on direct heat.
- Half a pintThe parenthetical cup is correct for American measure: 8 fl oz. It looks scant for a two-hour braise, so check the liquid partway and add more boiling water if the pot is going dry.
- The cutTwo inches thick and worth pounding means round steak — bottom or top round. Chuck also works. Tender quick-cooking cuts are wrong here; they will be dry long before two hours are up.
- Steak shredderA toothed tenderizing mallet or a bladed tenderizer. The point is not only to break the fibers but to drive in as much flour as the meat will absorb, which is what thickens the gravy later. Season the flour first.
- BrowningTwo tablespoons of fat in a hot pot, and do not crowd or move the steak until a crust forms. The floured surface scorches easily, so keep the heat at medium-high rather than full.
- Two hours, and howA bare simmer needs the lowest burner setting and an occasional look. The steak is done when a fork slides in with no resistance.
- YieldEnough for about four, with the pan gravy poured over.
Swiss steak has nothing to do with Switzerland. The name is generally traced to "swissing," an old term for smoothing or rolling cloth between rollers, applied by analogy to meat pounded flat and flour worked into it. It surfaces in American home cookbooks in the early twentieth century and became a standby of the cheap-cut repertoire, since pounding and long moist heat were the two reliable ways to make round steak pleasant. Its appearance in a casserole-cookery book is probably no accident: the single lidded pot seems to have enjoyed a vogue in the early decades of the century, often said to have been recommended as economical and labor-saving, and cookbooks devoted to dishes that browned and braised in the same vessel and came to the table in it were part of that current.