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Beef Steak Pie
First prepare seasoning of three parts salt and one part black pepper, with just a dash of ground nutmeg; next take tender steak, enough to fill the dish, cut this up into thin slices, now take each slice, sprinkle it with just enough of the above seasoning to season it (not too high), then sprinkle it with chopped parsley; next roll it up and pass a small wooden skewer through it, to hold it, or you can dispense with the skewer if you place the fold downward, to prevent its unfolding; continue this until the dish is full, then add water sufficient to make a good gravy, now lay on the top of this a few hard boiled eggs sliced, then put on the crust, previously having lined the inside edge of the dish with paste; now wash the top with eggs and bake it in a moderate heat; as soon as it boils, and has boiled about ten minutes, the whole should be cooked. By adopting this plan the meat will be tender and the gravy much richer than by the plan of par-boiling the meat prior to baking; the point to observe being not to bake it too quick. For a simple beefsteak pie, cut the steak into strips about half an inch in thickness, season them, lay them in the dish, add water for gravy, cover with crust and bake.
THE ECLIPSE ORNAMENTER. -Those who wish to practice the art taught in Prof. King's lessons, will find the invention, represented in the accompanying cut, a great convenience and saving of time, trouble and sugar. It seems to do away with all the annoyances which are incident to the use of the paper cones, either with or without the tubes mentioned in the lessons. These require a cone for every pattern of tube required for the work, or, if tubes are dispensed with altogether, many paper cones are required, in order to produce good work, owing to the end of the cone-no matter how correctly it may have been cut-getting soft, as all paper will, to say nothing of the annoyances from bursting, etc., etc., or the loss of sugar in each cone. ..2 4 3 No. 4 represents the bag, which may be paper or rubber. No. 3 the cap which fits in the bag, and to which No. 2, which contains the tube No. 1, is screwed. The dotted lines between figures Nos. 2 and 3 represent where the cup containing the tube screws on. To use it unscrew the part of the dotted lines between Nos. 2 and 3; drop the tube into the cup No. 2, then screw it on to cup No. 3; it is then ready for use. If you wish to change the tube, you have only to unscrew at the dotted lines as stated before, and insert what tube you require to continue work. The cut at the side shows the tube in the cup, ready to be screwed on the cup No. 3. The price of the ornamentor is $2.50, and it may be had by correspondence with Prof. C. H King, Orange, New Jersey. By a special arrangement any lady who is the owner of "Practical Housekeeping" will be supplied at twenty per cent. discount from the retail price.
We give in the following pages a number of carefully selected and thoroughly tested recipes, furnished us by accomplished mistresses of Southern mansions, in nearly every State in Dixie, always famous for its sumptuous tables and generous hospitality.
These, in addition to the very excellent recipes, distinctively Southern, scattered through previous pages, will meet, we hope, every want, in the way of cookery rules which is likely to be felt by the Southern Matron.
A raised beefsteak pie built from rolled, seasoned slices rather than cubes, baked from raw so the meat's own juices make the gravy. The method works, but the timing given belongs to a hotter, heavier dish than most modern cooks expect.
- The hinge: bake it slowlyThe recipe's own advice is the point to hold on to: a moderate heat. The book gives no figure, but "moderate" is generally reckoned somewhere around 325-350F, and the pie must not be rushed.
- The ten minutes is misleadingThe pie has to come up to a simmer inside the crust before that ten minutes begins, which for a full dish will take a good while in a moderate oven. Reckon on well over an hour in total, and check that the filling is bubbling before you call it done.
- Cut of beef"Tender steak" here means something that will cook through in an hour without braising — sirloin, rump or flank sliced thin against the grain. Chuck or shin will still be tough at the end of this timing and wants a long, wet cook instead.
- The seasoning mixThree parts salt to one part black pepper with a dash of nutmeg is a strong blend; a tablespoon of salt to a teaspoon of pepper makes more than enough for a 2 lb pie. The instruction "not too high" is literal — the gravy concentrates as it bakes.
- Water for gravyThe recipe asks only for "water sufficient to make a good gravy" -- enough to moisten, not to swamp the rolls. Beef stock in place of water gives a better result, and a spoonful of flour tossed with the slices will thicken it as it bakes.
- Lining the dish rim"Lining the inside edge of the dish with paste" means a strip of pastry pressed round the lip, which the lid is then sealed onto, giving the top crust something to grip.
- SkewersSmall wooden skewers are cocktail sticks; count them in and count them out, or simply set each roll seam-side down as the recipe allows.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities: "enough to fill the dish" and "a few" hard-boiled eggs. A 9-inch pie dish will take something in the region of 2 lb of steak and three sliced eggs, serving about six.
Rolled and skewered beef in a pie is a nineteenth-century refinement of a very old English form — the steak pie built from raw meat and its own liquor rather than from a stew poured under a lid. Rolling each slice around parsley and seasoning is the same trick as beef olives or paupiettes, and it does what the writer claims: the meat stays in discrete, juicy bundles instead of shrinking into a mass, and the exuded juices make a richer gravy. Hard-boiled egg laid under the crust is a standing feature of English and Anglo-American meat pies of the period, inherited from raised pork and veal-and-ham pies, where it filled space, sliced handsomely, and stretched the meat. That this appears in a Southern collection is unremarkable; the Dixie books drew heavily on the same British-descended repertoire as their Northern counterparts, reserving the regional material for separate sections.