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Spanish Beefsteak
2 pounds steak Bacon or salt pork Salt and red pepper 1/2 cup milk 1/2 cup water Have the steak about one inch thick; pound until thin; season and cover with a layer of bacon or salt pork cut into thin slices. Roll the steak; tie it with a cord and place it in a covered baking dish with the milk and water. Cook two hours, basting occasionally.
A rolled and tied braise of the plainest kind: pounded steak, a lining of cured pork, and just enough liquid to keep it from scorching. The instructions leave out an oven temperature and a pan size, and the loose-leaf page has picked up stray lines from a neighboring recipe.
- The stray ingredientsThe trailing "2 chile peppers, 1 pint warm water, 2 pounds beef" appears to be a fragment of another recipe; nothing in the method above uses it. Ignore it; the beefsteak needs only the first list.
- Which cut"Steak" cut an inch thick and pounded thin is most likely round steak, the sort of cheap cut this treatment suits. A 2 lb top or bottom round slice, or two thinner slices overlapped, will roll cleanly. Tenderloin or ribeye would be wasted on two hours of moist heat.
- Oven temperatureNone is given; the book leaves the heat to the cook. A moderate 325F, covered, works. Milk catches easily, so watch the bottom of the dish if you go hotter.
- Red pepperIn American books of this period "red pepper" means ground cayenne, not paprika and not sweet pepper. Use it sparingly at first, since the bacon or salt pork brings its own salt and the seasoning concentrates as the liquid reduces.
- Salt porkIf you use salt pork rather than bacon, blanch the slices in simmering water for a few minutes to draw out excess salt, then pat dry. Otherwise skip the salt in the seasoning entirely.
- Rolling and tyingPound to an even quarter inch or the roll will be lumpy and cook unevenly. Lay the pork slices with the grain of the meat, roll along the short side, and tie at one-inch intervals with kitchen twine. Butcher's twine only; no synthetic string.
- The milkA cup of liquid total is little for a two-hour braise. Use a dish just large enough to hold the roll, check at the halfway point, and add a splash of water if the bottom is going dry. The milk will separate and look curdled, which is normal; whisk the pan juices smooth or reduce and strain them for the sauce.
- Doneness and servingTwo hours suits round steak, which needs the full time to go tender rather than merely cooked through. Rest ten minutes, snip the twine, and slice across the roll into pinwheels. Serves four.
The name reflects a habit of early twentieth-century American cookbooks rather than any Spanish original: "Spanish" on a meat recipe of this era usually signalled red pepper, or tomato and onion, or simply something a little more emphatic than boiled beef. The dish itself is a rolled and larded braise, the same idea as the German Rindsrouladen and the Italian involtini, and it belongs to the long tradition of making tough round steak palatable by pounding it thin, wrapping fat inside it, and cooking it slowly in a covered vessel. Fragments of one recipe sometimes sit at the foot of another; the leftover chile peppers and warm water here are a small artifact of that.