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Deviled Steak
1 t salt 1/2 t pepper 1/8 t paprika Brown two or three small slices of onion in butter. When golden brown remove the onion and add the steak, cut in about three inch squares and dredged in flour. Brown well on both sides. Remove the meat and put in mustard, salt, pepper, paprika, vinegar and flour. Add about two cups of water slowly and mix well. Return the steak to pan, cover tightly simmer about an hour, or until steak is tender. Serve with the gravy poured over the meat.
Ruth A Willers.
A church-supper braise printed with half its ingredient list missing — the seasonings are itemized but the steak, butter, flour, mustard and vinegar quantities never made it to the page. What follows fills the gaps and sets the method straight.
- The missing quantitiesThe printed list gives only salt, pepper and paprika; the method calls for mustard, vinegar, flour, butter and steak with no amounts at all. Reasonable working figures for the seasoning given are about 1 1/2 lb steak, 2 tbsp butter, 1 tbsp dry mustard, 2 tbsp vinegar and 2 tbsp flour for the gravy, but these are inferred, not original.
- Read "t" as teaspoonThe usual abbreviation in cookbooks of this period (capital T for tablespoon), though this page uses only the lowercase form. One teaspoon salt against two cups of liquid is modest seasoning for the volume.
- Cut of meat"Steak" here means a cheap braising cut — round, chuck or flank — not a grilling steak. An hour of covered simmering would ruin a ribeye and is exactly what round needs.
- Dredge dry, brown hardPat the three-inch squares dry before flouring, and brown them in batches with space between. Crowded meat steams, and the fond left in the pan is the whole flavor base of the gravy.
- The hinge: cook the mustard and flour in the fatThe recipe puts mustard, salt, pepper, paprika, vinegar and flour into the hot buttered pan before any water goes in; give them a moment in the fat. Dry mustard tastes raw and harsh otherwise, and unbrowned flour leaves the gravy pasty.
- Water in slowlyAdd the two cups a splash at a time, whisking each addition smooth before the next, or the roux will seize into lumps. Beef stock in place of water is a straightforward improvement.
- Simmer, don't boil"Cover tightly, simmer" means the barest bubble, on the lowest burner. A rolling boil tightens the muscle fiber and the hour will leave the meat stringy rather than tender.
- YieldAbout 1 1/2 lb of steak in this quantity of gravy serves four at lunch, with mashed potatoes, noodles or toast to take the sauce.
"Deviled" in American cookbooks of this period signals mustard, pepper and something sharp — vinegar or Worcestershire — rather than any particular technique; the same logic gives us deviled eggs, deviled ham and deviled crab. The word is generally traced to peppery dishes in English kitchens around the turn of the nineteenth century and by 1900 was a familiar shorthand on both sides of the Atlantic. The appeal is plain enough: this is a way to make a tough, cheap cut of beef into something with enough character to serve to guests, using the mustard tin and vinegar bottle already on the shelf.