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Swiss Steak
2 lbs. beef 1/2 C flour 12 t salt 1/8 t pepper 1 small onion, chopped 2 T Crisco 14 C chopped green pepper 1 C stewed or canned tomatoes Wipe meat with a clean damp cloth. Cut in 2 inch square pieces. Mix flour, salt and pepper together. Pound flour into the meat with a wooden potato masher. Brown onion and meat in the Crisco. Add green pepper, tomatoes and water. Cover and cook slowly 2 hours or until meat is tender. The stock may be thickened more with a little flour to a smooth paste with cold water.
Mrs. A. W. Waldo.
A straightforward braise, transcribed with a few fractions mangled in the original printing. The key step is the flour pounding, not the browning.
- Garbled fractions"12 t salt" is almost certainly 1/2 teaspoon and "14 C chopped green pepper" 1/4 cup; both are missing their fraction slashes in the text as it comes down to us. Two pounds of beef will take closer to 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt for modern palates, added in stages.
- The hinge: pound, don't dredgeSwiss steak is defined by working the seasoned flour into the meat with a mallet — the original calls for a wooden potato masher — which breaks down connective tissue and builds a crust that thickens the sauce. Skip it and you have plain stewed beef.
- Cut of beefThe recipe just says "beef," meaning a cheap braising cut: bottom round, chuck or arm steak. No thickness is given, only 2-inch square pieces. Two pounds serves 4 to 6.
- CriscoStill sold, though reformulated so that it is labelled as containing no trans fat per serving. Two tablespoons of any neutral oil, or beef drippings, does the same job.
- The unmeasured waterNo quantity is given. Add about 1/2 to 1 cup, enough that the liquid comes halfway up the meat; the tomatoes supply the rest.
- Cooking time and heatTwo hours at a bare simmer on the stovetop is right for chuck. A covered pot in a 325F oven gives more even results and less risk of scorching the flour on the bottom.
- Thickening at the endThe flour pounded into the meat usually suffices. If the stock is thin, whisk a tablespoon of flour into cold water first — never into the hot pan — and simmer a few minutes to cook out the raw taste.
Swiss steak has nothing to do with Switzerland: the name is generally traced to "swissing," an old term for rolling or pounding cloth smooth, applied by extension to flattening meat, though the derivation is not firmly documented. It became a staple of American church and community cookbooks precisely because it rescues the cheapest cuts, and it sits comfortably alongside home economics teaching that promoted long, moist cooking for tough beef. The named shortening is a period marker in itself — Crisco appeared in 1911 — and in a contributed-recipe collection a neighbor's name at the bottom carried more weight than any advertisement.