Beefsteak Pie
Cut rump or flank steak into strips two inches long by one wide. Put them, with the bone, into just enough water to cover them and stew until partly done. Line a baking dish with pie paste; put in a layer of meat with a little thinly sliced onion, salt and pepper; next a layer of sliced boiled potatoes with a bit of butter on each slice. Now alternate the steak and potato layers until the dish is full. Thicken the gravy with browned flour and pour in; put on a top crust, brush it with beaten egg and bake until quite brown.
A straightforward two-crust meat pie of the sort every American cookbook of the period carried, written for a cook who already knew how far to stew a piece of beef and how hot her range ran. The gaps are all in the numbers.
- The hinge: stew only part wayThe meat finishes in the oven under a sealed crust, so it should come out of the pot still firm and a little chewy — roughly 30 to 45 minutes at a bare simmer for the strip sizes given. Stew it to tenderness first and it will be stringy by the time the pastry browns.
- Which cutRump is still sold as rump roast or bottom round and works well. Flank has become an expensive grilling steak and is wasted here; boneless chuck gives the same result for less. The book assumes a bone in the piece — ask the butcher for a beef shin or marrow bone to stew alongside, which adds body to the gravy.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. 'Bake until quite brown' suggests a hot oven; as a modern equivalent, about 425F for the first 15 minutes to set and colour the bottom crust, then 375F for another 30 to 40 minutes.
- Browned flourFlour toasted dry in a skillet or a slow oven until it is the colour of cinnamon. Cookbooks of the period often advise keeping some on hand; it gives colour and a nutty flavour, but browning reduces its thickening power, so use noticeably more than you would raw flour.
- How much pastryA standard 9-inch deep dish needs a double batch of short crust, about 2 1/2 cups flour to 1 cup fat. Line the dish, chill it while you assemble, and cut two or three vents in the top or the steam will lift the lid off the filling.
- Gravy levelPour the thickened gravy in until it comes just below the top layer of potato, not over it. A pie filled to the brim boils out through the vents and glues the crust to the dish.
- YieldAbout six servings from a 9-inch deep dish, with roughly 2 lb of trimmed steak and three or four medium boiled potatoes.
Beefsteak pie belongs to the plain English tradition — a cheaper cut made tender by stewing, then stretched with potato and sealed under pastry so that nothing of the broth is lost. Butterick, better known for dress patterns, published its cook book in the years around 1900 as part of a wider line of household manuals aimed at the middle-class woman running a home without a full staff, and the recipe's economy shows it: the bone goes into the pot for body, the cooking liquid becomes the gravy, and browned flour supplies the colour that a longer roast would have given. Layering the meat with sliced boiled potato rather than serving potatoes alongside is often said to be the thriftier habit.