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Entrecotes, Creole
Neatly flatten and trim two tender sirloin steaks of one and a quarter pounds each. Season with a teaspoon salt, half teaspoon pepper, rub with a tablespoon oil, arrange on broiler and broil them for eight minutes on each side, remove, dress on a hot dish, pour a hot Creole sauce over them and serve.
A short recipe that assumes you already know how to make a Creole sauce and how hot a coal broiler runs. Two decisions matter: the thickness of the steak and the temperature of the fire.
- "Entrecotes" vs. sirloinEntrecôte is properly the cut between the ribs — what a butcher now sells as ribeye or scotch fillet. The recipe substitutes sirloin, which is leaner; either works, but ribeye is closer to the name.
- Steak sizeA pound and a quarter each means two large steaks, roughly 1 to 1.25 inches thick, each serving one hungry diner or two moderate ones. Total yield is two to four servings.
- Eight minutes a sideThat timing suits a coal or wood broiler that is fierce at the surface but not as close as a modern element. Under a domestic broiler set to high with the meat 3–4 inches from the heat, 8 minutes a side on a 1-inch steak will land well past medium; 4–5 minutes a side, or an internal 130–135F for medium-rare, is nearer the mark.
- Flatten with restraint"Neatly flatten" means evening out the thickness so the steak cooks uniformly, not pounding it thin. A few taps with the flat of a heavy knife or a mallet is enough.
- The Creole sauceThe recipe assumes a Creole sauce is already to hand, presumably from elsewhere in the same book. Make it before the steaks and keep it hot — a cold sauce on a broiled steak kills both.
- Oil and seasoningA tablespoon of oil for two steaks is a light film, enough to keep them from sticking and to help the surface brown. The recipe salts immediately before broiling; modern practice generally favours either salting well ahead or salting just before, on the view that a short wait draws moisture to the surface and hinders the crust.
- Rest before saucingThe original sends them straight from broiler to dish. A few minutes on a warm plate before the sauce goes over is usually recommended, so that less juice runs out and thins the sauce.
Entrecôte is French, Creole sauce is New Orleans, and the pairing is the sort of hybrid that Anglo-American hotel cookery produced, when French menu language was the professional standard and regional American sauces were being folded into it. The tomato-pepper-onion base called "Creole" in books of this period reflects the Louisiana kitchen's own layering of French technique over Spanish, West African and Caribbean ingredients — tomatoes and sweet peppers among them. That a professional cook could write "a hot Creole sauce" without further explanation suggests the formula had entered the professional repertoire alongside Bordelaise, Bearnaise and the rest of the standard sauce list.