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Beefsteak and Onions
Select a thick steak and butter both sides; slice the onions thin and lay a layer of onions on top of the steak. Place it in the cooking vessel and use both radiators, the same as in roasting; and leave for about three quarters of an hour.
This is a fireless-cooker recipe, written for an insulated box heated by iron or soapstone discs rather than by any continuous fire. Without that vessel the instructions make little sense, so the translation matters more than the ingredient list.
- What a radiator isThe "radiators" are solid metal or soapstone discs heated separately on the range or in the oven until very hot, then set in the cooker with the food between them. "Use both radiators, the same as in roasting" means one below the pan and one above, so the steak gets heat from two sides in a sealed, insulated chamber.
- The hinge: the discs carry all the heatNothing is added to the box once it is closed, so the temperature only falls from the moment the lid goes down. If the radiators are not brought to a genuine roasting heat first, forty-five minutes will leave the steak barely warm rather than cooked.
- No searing, no browningRetained-heat cooking gives no crust and little rendering of fat, and the butter on both sides is there to keep the surface from drying rather than to fry it. Expect a pale, gently cooked steak with a good deal of onion-flavoured liquid in the pan.
- Check with a thermometer, not the clockBecause the starting heat of the discs is unknowable from the text, treat the three-quarters of an hour as an estimate only. Take the internal temperature of the steak when you open the cooker rather than trusting the time.
- "A thick steak"The recipe gives no thickness, weight or cut. A single piece of about 1 1/2 to 2 inches will suit the method better than a thin steak, which dries out under long, gentle heat; note that the short falling-heat period will not tenderise a tough braising cut.
- Onion quantityNone is given. Two large onions sliced thin makes a layer that covers a steak of that size and gives off enough moisture to keep the meat from scorching against the hot pan.
- If you have no fireless cookerThe nearest equivalent is a covered heavy pan or Dutch oven in a 325F oven for the same buttered steak and onion layer, checked at 45 minutes. It is not the same dish, but it is the same intent.
- YieldDepends entirely on the size of the steak chosen, since the recipe gives none; a steak of the size suggested above will serve three to four, with the pan onions and juices spooned over.
Fireless cookery had a real vogue in American kitchens from roughly 1905 into the 1920s: an insulated box, a set of heated soapstone or iron discs, and the promise that a meal could finish itself while the range went cold and the cook went out. It was sold as economy and as freedom from tending a fire, and the argument sharpened during the First World War, when fuel conservation was a household duty. That a plain beefsteak with onions needed its own entry tells you how much retranslation the method demanded: every familiar dish had to be relearned in terms of stored heat, and the instructions read less like cooking directions than like operating notes for a piece of equipment.