Beefsteak Pie
Cut remnants of cold broiled steak or roast beef in oneinch cubes. Cover with boiling water, add one-half onion, and cook slowly one hour. Remove onion, thicken gravy with flour diluted with cold water, and season with salt and pepper. Add potatoes cut in one-fourth inch slices, which
A leftovers dish: cooked beef stretched with gravy and potato under a crust. The text as printed here breaks off mid-sentence, so the assembly and baking must be inferred from the standard form of the dish.
- The missing endingThe directions cut off at the potatoes, which in the full recipe are parboiled five minutes, then combined with the meat and gravy in a baking dish, covered with pie crust or a baking-powder biscuit mixture, and baked until the crust is done. The book gives no oven temperature or baking time; it works with a hot oven.
- Start with cooked meatThis is not a braise. The beef is already broiled or roasted, so the hour of slow simmering is there to build gravy and soften the trimmings, not to tenderize a raw cut. Well-done roast scraps will shred if pushed much past an hour.
- Water, not stockThe recipe calls only for boiling water and half an onion. Beef stock gives a better gravy and costs nothing in effort if you have it.
- Thickening ratioThe book leaves the quantity open. Roughly two tablespoons flour shaken with a quarter cup cold water per two cups liquid gives a gravy that coats without setting to paste under the crust.
- Crust and steamCut a vent in the top crust or the filling will lift it off the dish. A plain pie pastry or the baking-powder biscuit crust both work; the recipe has the filling cooled before the crust goes on.
- PotatoesQuarter-inch slices of a firm waxy potato hold their shape; russets will break down into the gravy. Parboil them briefly so they finish in the oven at the same time as the crust.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities at all; it starts from whatever cold beef the household had left, so the size of the pie depends entirely on that.
Beefsteak pie belongs to the older English tradition of meat under pastry, and the version in Farmer's book is squarely a thrift recipe, aimed at yesterday's roast. The Boston Cooking School's founding purpose was domestic economy as much as fine cooking, and the assumption behind an entry like this is a household that roasted or broiled a large piece of beef and then owed itself two more meals from the remnants. The onion cooked whole and then removed suggests aromatics used for background flavor rather than presence.