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Pressed Beef Flank
Wipe, remove superfluous fat, and roll a flank of beef. Put in a kettle, cover with boiling water, and add one tablespoon salt, one-half teaspoon peppercorns, a bit of bay leaf, and a bone or two which may be at hand. Cook slowly until meat is in shreds; there should be but little liquor in kettle when meat is done. Arrange meat in a deep pan, pour over liquor, cover, and press with a heavy weight. Serve cold, thinly sliced.
A cold pressed meat loaf made from a cheap cut and its own gelatin. Nothing here is difficult, but the recipe leaves out every time and temperature that matters.
- The hinge: reduce the liquidThe instruction that decides success is "there should be but little liquor in kettle when meat is done." That concentrated, gelatin-rich liquid is the only thing binding the loaf. If the pot is still swimming, lift the meat out and boil the broth down hard before pouring it back.
- What cut to buyA whole beef flank in Farmer's day was a large, coarse, well-connected piece from the belly. Modern flank steak is trimmed thin and lean and gives less collagen; ask for boneless short rib, beef shin, or a brisket point instead, about 3 to 4 lb.
- "Cook slowly"A bare simmer, water barely trembling, with the pot partly covered. Figure 3 to 4 hours until the meat pulls apart under a fork. A hard boil at any point squeezes the fibers dry and leaves them stringy rather than shredded.
- Add the bones deliberatelyThe casual "a bone or two which may be at hand" is doing real work. A split marrow bone or a couple of knuckle pieces adds gelatin that helps set the loaf; without them the slices are more likely to break up.
- Rolling and pressingThe roll will not survive the long simmer in any case, since the meat cooks to shreds. Pack the shredded meat into a loaf pan or small deep dish, pour the reduced liquor over, lay plastic wrap and a second pan on top, and weight it with two or three cans.
- Chill, do not stand outGet the weighted pan into the refrigerator as soon as it stops steaming and leave it at least 8 hours, preferably overnight. A large mass of cooked meat left to cool slowly at room temperature spends too long in the range where bacteria multiply.
- SaltOne tablespoon of salt in a kettle of water seasons the broth, not the meat. Taste the reduced liquor before it goes over the meat and correct it there, since cold food reads flatter than hot.
- Yield and servingAbout 8 to 10 servings as a cold cut. Slice thin across the grain with a long knife and serve with mustard, horseradish, or pickles; it is a lunch and sandwich dish, not a dinner roast.
Pressed meats belong to the era before household refrigeration was general: a tough, cheap cut was simmered to shreds, packed with its own gelatin, weighted, and set in a cold larder, producing something that sliced cleanly and kept for several days. Fannie Farmer's book is full of this economy, and the flank, from the belly behind the ribs, was among the least expensive parts of the animal. The technique is the same one behind head cheese, brawn, and the pressed tongue of English cookery, all relying on collagen dissolved into gelatin rather than on any added binder, which is why the recipe casually calls for "a bone or two which may be at hand." The Boston Cooking School was training young women in the management of a household budget as much as in cookery, and a dish that turned the cheapest beef into a presentable cold platter suited that purpose exactly.