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Beefsteak En Casserole
1 pound round steak 2 carrots cut in cubes 2 turnips cut in cubes 1/2 dozen tiny onions 1 bay leaf 1/2 tablespoon kitchen bouquet 1½ cups boiling water Salt and pepper Have the steak one or one and a half inches thick; leave it whole or cut it into large square pieces; sear on both sides in a hot frying pan; then remove to the casserole, with the other ingredients. Cover and cook gently for about an hour and a half. The sticking piece, shinbone and brisket may also be served en casserole, but will require longer cooking.
A plain braise dressed up for the chafing-dish and casserole vogue of the 1910s. The recipe assumes a heavy covered pot and a cook who knows what a piece of round steak needs.
- What "en casserole" means hereThe casserole is the vessel — a lidded earthenware or enamelled pot — not a baked layered dish. A Dutch oven or any heavy covered pan does the job, on a low burner or in a low oven.
- The hinge: sear hard, then keep it below a simmerRound steak is lean and worked; a hard brown crust in a dry hot pan is the only flavour development the dish gets, and after that the liquid must barely tremble. A rolling boil for ninety minutes will leave the meat stringy rather than tender.
- Kitchen bouquetA caramel-and-vegetable browning sauce, still sold under that name. It contributes colour and a faint savoury note, not much else; half a tablespoon is right for this quantity, and a teaspoon of soy or a dark stock base substitutes acceptably.
- The cuts named at the end"Sticking piece" is the neck, cut from where the animal was bled — sold now as chuck or neck. Brisket and shin are still themselves. All three are collagen-rich and want two and a half to three hours, not an hour and a half.
- Liquid levelA cup and a half of boiling water will not cover a whole thick steak, and is not meant to. Keep the lid tight so the steam does the work, and check once at the hour mark that the pot has not gone dry.
- VegetablesCubed carrot and turnip added at the start will be very soft after ninety minutes. Adding them at the halfway point keeps them intact; the tiny onions can go in from the beginning.
- YieldA pound of steak with root vegetables serves two generously, three at a stretch. There is no thickening in the recipe — the liquid stays a thin gravy unless you reduce it after the meat comes out.
Mrs. Fryer's book appeared when the chafing dish and the covered casserole were both fashionable pieces of equipment in American middle-class households, marketed as a way to cook at the table or in a small apartment kitchen without a full range. A plain beef braise treated as chafing-dish or casserole cookery says a good deal about the period: the technique is centuries old, but the French name and the dedicated pot made it feel new and slightly elegant. The list of alternative cuts — sticking piece, shinbone, brisket — is the practical half of the entry, and reflects a butchering vocabulary that has largely disappeared from retail counters; the neck was cheap precisely because it needed the long, gentle treatment the casserole was built to give. Kitchen Bouquet, which supplies the browning here, was already a familiar shelf staple by then and is one of the few branded ingredients in these older books that a modern reader can still find on sale, though the formulation and ownership have changed over the past century.