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Beefsteak with Sherry Sauce
Broil steak in usual way. Lay it in a covered dish, pour on Sherry Sauce good and hot. Cover, and let stand in a warm place 3-4 minutes before eating. 2 TABLESPOONS BUTTER I TEASPOON FLOUR Sherry Sauce 1/2 TEASPOON SALT 1/8 TEASPOON PEPPER, OR 1/2 TEASPOON I TABLESPOON CATSUP PAPRIKA 1/2 CUP SHERRY JUICE OF 1/2 LEMON Brown flour in butter, add lemon juice, catsup and seasonings, stir in sherry, heat to boiling point and pour over steak.
A grilled steak finished with a quick pan sauce of butter, browned flour, sherry and lemon. The method is sound; only the ingredient list needs untangling and a few timings pinned down.
- The sauce ingredientsRead them as: 2 tablespoons butter, 1 teaspoon flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/8 teaspoon pepper (or 1/2 teaspoon paprika), 1 tablespoon catsup, 1/2 cup sherry, juice of half a lemon. That comes to something under half a cup of finished sauce; the recipe does not say how many the steak serves.
- Brown the flour properlyThis is the hinge. Cook the teaspoon of flour in the butter over medium heat until it smells nutty and turns the colour of light caramel, a minute or two. Pale flour leaves a raw, pasty edge that half a cup of sherry will not hide.
- Which sherryA dry or medium sherry (fino, amontillado) suits this sauce better than cream sherry or supermarket "cooking sherry", which will push it sweet and salty; the recipe itself specifies only "sherry". Bring it just to a boil as directed, which takes some of the raw alcohol edge off, though not all of it.
- Catsup then and nowOlder catsups were often thinner and sharper than modern ketchup, and today's bottled ketchup is sweeter, so a scant tablespoon is plenty; a splash of Worcestershire in its place keeps the savoury note without the sugar.
- Broiling the steakThe recipe says only "in usual way"; broil over a live fire or under a hot broiler. Aim for 125-130F internal for medium-rare on a steak an inch or more thick, and pull it before that if it will rest in hot sauce.
- The rest is not idleThe 3-4 minutes covered in a warm place lets the steak's juices redistribute while the sauce takes on the meat drippings. Do not stretch it much further or the residual heat will carry a medium-rare steak to medium.
- Warm the dishHalf a cup of sauce poured onto a cold platter loses heat fast. Heat the covered dish first, in a low oven or with boiling water, so the sauce stays at temperature through the rest.
Sherry, butter and lemon over broiled beef sits in a long tavern-and-chophouse line of steak sauces built in the pan from browned flour, a fortified wine and something acid. The tablespoon of bottled tomato catsup points to a twentieth-century American kitchen rather than an earlier one.