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Planked Beefsteak
Wipe, remove superfluous fat, and pan broil seven minutes a porterhouse or cross-cut of the rump steak cut one and three-fourths inches thick. Butter a plank and arrange a border of Duchess Potatoes, using three times the recipe, close to edge, using a pastry bag and rose tube. Remove steak to plank, put in a hot oven, and bake until steak is cooked and potatoes are browned. Spread steak with butter, sprinkle with salt, pepper, and finely chopped parsley. Garnish top of steak with sautéd mushroom caps, and put around steak at equal distances halves of small tomatoes sautéd in butter, and on top of each tomato a circular slice of cucumber.
A two-stage steak: a hard sear in a pan, then a spell in the oven on a wooden plank while the piped potato border sets and colors. The plank is the whole point and also the part most likely to go wrong.
- The plank itselfUse a hardwood plank about an inch thick — oak, maple or hickory — never softwood or anything glued or varnished. Planks were customarily seasoned before first use by rubbing with oil and warming them slowly in a low oven, the process repeated once or twice; the recipe itself says nothing about this. Butter it well before the potatoes go on, and set it on a sheet pan to catch drips.
- "Pan broil"This means searing in a dry, very hot heavy pan with no added fat, pouring off drippings as they collect. Seven minutes total for a 1¾-inch steak, turning often. The steak will be well short of done at this point.
- A hot ovenThe book gives no temperature; in modern terms roughly 400 to 450F. The potato border needs high heat to brown before the steak overcooks, so preheat fully and pipe the potatoes onto the buttered plank while the pan is heating.
- Duchess Potatoes, tripledThree times the base recipe (given elsewhere in the book, not here) makes a substantial quantity of riced potato bound with egg yolk and butter. Pipe with a large star tube — the "rose tube" of the period — right at the plank's edge, leaving a clear center for the meat. A stiff mixture holds its ridges; a wet one slumps and browns unevenly.
- Judging donenessThe book gives no oven time. Figure 8 to 15 minutes and go by a thermometer: 125 to 130F at the center for medium-rare, 135 to 140F for medium. Pull it at the low end, since the hot plank keeps cooking the underside.
- Garnish, done in advanceSauté the mushroom caps and the tomato halves separately in butter before the steak goes in the oven, and slice the cucumber cold. All three go on after the steak comes out, not baked with it.
- Serving and yieldA porterhouse cut this thick runs perhaps 2 to 3 lb. The plank comes to the table hot straight from the oven, so it needs something heatproof under it.
Plank cookery came into American restaurants and then home kitchens in the late nineteenth century, often traced to the practice of cooking fish on a board before an open fire, and by the 1890s planked shad and planked steak were appearing on hotel menus. Farmer's version is squarely of its moment: the plank has become mostly a serving device, the actual searing happens in a pan on the range, and the wood contributes a faint scorched smell rather than any real smoke. What the recipe really shows is the era's taste for the composed platter ushroom caps ranked on top, tomato halves at fixed intervals, each capped with a cucumber round. This is the same instinct that governs the garnishes and molds throughout the Boston Cooking-School Cook Book: food arranged to a plan, so that a plain broiled steak arrives looking like an accomplishment.