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Beefsteak à la Victor Hugo
Wipe a porterhouse steak, broil, and serve with Victor Hugo Sauce. Cook one-half teaspoon finely chopped shallot in one tablespoon tarragon vinegar five minutes. Wash one-third cup butter, and divide in thirds. Add one piece butter to mixture, with yolks two eggs, one teaspoon lemon juice, and one teaspoon meat extract. Cook over hot water, stirring constantly; as soon as butter is melted, add second piece, and then third piece. When mixture thickens, add one-half tablespoon grated horseradish.
A broiled porterhouse with what is essentially a béarnaise reduction turned into a meat-scented, horseradish-finished hollandaise. The sauce is the whole dish; the steak asks nothing unusual of you.
- The hinge: keep the yolks below a simmerCook in a bowl over hot, not boiling, water and stir without stopping, as the recipe directs. The butter goes in three pieces, one after the other as each melts, which keeps the mixture from overheating all at once.
- "Wash" the butterAn old step for pressing salt and buttermilk out of butter: knead it under cold water until the water runs clear, then pat dry. With modern unsalted butter you can skip it, but keep the butter cold and firm so it melts slowly.
- Meat extractFannie Farmer meant a concentrated beef extract of the Liebig or Bovril type. A teaspoon of a glace de viande or a stiff beef base gives the same salty, roasted depth; if you use a bouillon paste, taste before adding any further salt.
- Shallot and tarragon vinegarOne tablespoon of vinegar reduced five minutes with the shallot will nearly disappear. Use a small pan, keep the heat low, and do not let it cook dry — the residual moisture is what carries the flavour into the yolks.
- Butter quantityOne-third cup is about 5 tablespoons, roughly 75 g, divided into three pieces of a little under 2 tablespoons each. Two yolks will carry that comfortably.
- Horseradish lastGrated fresh horseradish loses its bite quickly when heated, which is why it goes in at the very end, once the mixture has thickened. Bottled prepared horseradish works if you drain it, but it brings vinegar with it.
- The steakThe recipe says only to wipe and broil it. A thick porterhouse wants a hot broiler; judge doneness by feel or thermometer rather than the clock, and rest it before saucing so the juices do not thin the emulsion on the plate.
- YieldThe sauce makes about half a cup, enough for one large porterhouse serving two, or three smaller steaks. It will not reheat; hold it warm over the same hot water for no more than half an hour.
The name belongs to the fashion, running from the 1870s through the 1900s, for attaching famous names to composed dishes — Victor Hugo died in 1885 a national monument in France, and restaurant cooks named garnishes after him as they did after Rossini, Sarah Bernhardt and Nellie Melba. The sauce itself is a béarnaise family member: shallot cooked in tarragon vinegar, mounted with butter and yolks, then pushed in a savoury direction with beef extract and horseradish. Its use of commercial meat extract shows how far such products had entered respectable American cookery; Liebig's extract and its imitators were sold as both a tonic and a flavouring, and Farmer treats a teaspoon of the stuff as an ordinary pantry item alongside lemon juice and butter.