No. 2046

Bear Steaks Broiled

Tranches d'Ours Grillees

Bear's meat when young can be broiled and after it is cooked, has much the same flavor as beef. Cut some slices from off the thigh, season with salt and coat over with oil, then broil; when done dress on a sharp sauce (No. 538) with grated horseradish added.

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For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

This is a broiled steak with no stated doneness, and the meat is the one common game animal that cannot be treated like beef. The problem is parasitological, not culinary.

Why broiling bear failsBear is the leading source of human trichinellosis in North America, and Trichinella nativa, the species found in northern bears, is notably freeze-resistant, so the usual pork-era precautions do not apply. A steak cut from the thigh, oiled and broiled to the point where it "has much the same flavor as beef" is by definition not carried to a temperature that reliably inactivates encysted larvae throughout the muscle.
The book's own premise is the hazardRanhofer recommends the meat specifically "when young," on the assumption that youth means tenderness and tenderness means brief cooking. Youth is no guarantee of safety: a young bear can also carry Trichinella, and the thigh is skeletal muscle, precisely where larvae encyst.
Trichinae are not visible or tasteableThe larvae are microscopic; there is no smell, no discoloration and no change in texture to inspect for.
Legality and sourcingBear is not an ordinary commercial meat in the United States or the EU; it mostly reaches the table through hunting, and several jurisdictions restrict or prohibit its sale. Anyone handling it should follow current state or provincial game-agency guidance for cooking wild game, not a Gilded Age steak recipe.
On the accompanimentsNo. 538 is one of Ranhofer's sharp brown sauces, with grated horseradish stirred in here; the exact composition is whatever that cross-referenced entry gives. Either way, the sauce and the horseradish are perfectly serviceable with any properly cooked roast or braised meat.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of some thirty years in the kitchen at Delmonico's, and its game chapters read as an inventory of what a New York market could supply to a rich clientele in the age before federal wildlife law. Bear appeared alongside venison, antelope, canvasback duck and the blackbirds of the very next entry, all of it shot and shipped rather than farmed. European kitchens generally treated bear as an autumn and winter meat, and it turns up as ham, as smoked paw, and as a long-marinated civet in the manner of jugged hare; the terse confidence of this entry — cut, salt, oil, broil — says less about bear than about Ranhofer's assumption that anything from the thigh of a young animal could be handled like a sirloin. Trichinella had been identified in the 1830s and trichinosis was a recognised hazard of undercooked meat by Ranhofer's day, but the risk from bear went unremarked in professional cookbooks of this kind, and Delmonico's diners were eating on trust.