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Steak à la Chiron
Spread broiled rump steak with Hollandaise Sauce I (see p. 274) to which is added a few drops onion juice and onehalf tablespoon finely chopped parsley.
A three-line finishing instruction rather than a full recipe: the whole dish is a broiled steak under a herbed hollandaise. Everything depends on the sauce holding and the steak resting.
- Rump steak, then and nowNineteenth-century American rump steak came from the hindquarter behind the loin, above the round; there is no exact modern equivalent, but top sirloin or a thick top round steak is the usual substitute. It is lean and is best cooked no further than medium rare and sliced across the grain.
- Broiling heatFarmer's broiling meant cooking close to a clear, hot fire, i.e. very high radiant heat with the meat a few inches from the source. Modern equivalent: preheat the broiler fully; an inch-thick steak will take roughly 4 to 5 minutes a side, and 125-130F internal corresponds to rare to medium rare.
- Hollandaise IThe referenced sauce is the butter-in-pieces method built over hot water, not the blender version: yolks, lemon juice and butter worked over hot water until thickened. Keep the water below a simmer; overheated, the sauce will curdle and cannot then be spread.
- Onion juiceA standard period seasoning, obtained by pressing or scraping a cut onion against a grater and collecting the liquid without the pulp. "A few drops" is literal: it is there for aroma only.
- Order of workMake the sauce first and hold it off direct heat over warm water, then broil, and dress the steak as soon as it comes off the heat so neither sauce nor meat is left waiting.
- ParsleyHalf a tablespoon of finely chopped parsley, stirred in at the last moment.
- YieldThe original gives no yield. A 1 1/2 lb steak will serve three to four, and a batch of Hollandaise I makes roughly 3/4 cup, more sauce than such a dish needs.
The "a la" names scattered through the Boston Cooking-School Cook Book may be read as shorthand for the French restaurant repertoire that American hotel and club kitchens had absorbed by the 1890s, translated into terms a home cook with a coal range could manage. Steak with hollandaise, onion juice and parsley invites comparison with a maitre d'hotel treatment, with an egg sauce in place of the compound butter, and the name Chiron recalls the centaur of Greek myth who tutored Achilles, though what connection, if any, the name has to the dish is unknown; classical and mythological garnish names were fashionable in the period. Onion juice, which appears repeatedly in the book, has been taken to reflect a preference of the era for onion flavor without visible onion, and grating an onion for its liquid was a routine kitchen task before commercial powders and pastes existed.