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Salisbury Steak
Mince very finely two pounds raw rump of beef. Season with one and a half teaspoons salt and a half teaspoon pepper. Break in one whole raw egg, mix well with the hand for five minutes. Divide the hash into six equal parts; give them a nice egg form; arrange on a double broiler; lightly glaze with a little sweet oil and broil for eight minutes on each side. Dress on a hot dish, giving them a crown shape, and serve.
A plain broiled beef patty of the sort that filled hotel menus around 1900. Two details govern the result: how finely the beef is minced and how long it is worked.
- The cut, and what to buyRump is lean and well flavoured but dry on its own. Ask for rump or top round coarse-ground twice, or grind it yourself; if you use supermarket ground beef, 85/15 chuck gives a better patty than anything leaner.
- Five minutes of mixing is deliberateModern burger practice says handle the meat as little as possible, because working it makes it springy and sausage-like. That springy bind is exactly what this recipe wants — it is what holds the egg-shaped patties together on a wire broiler. Do not shorten it if you want the shape to survive.
- Sweet oilOlive oil, in the grade sold for the table. Any mild oil does the same job here, which is simply to keep the surface from sticking and to help it colour.
- "Double broiler"A hinged wire basket that clamps the food between two grids so it can be turned in one motion over coals or a gas flame. A stovetree grill pan or a heavy skillet gives the same crust; if you use the oven broiler, set the rack about 4 inches from the element.
- Eight minutes a side is a lotThat timing suits a coal fire at moderate heat and a thick egg-shaped patty. Under a hot modern broiler or in a skillet, 4 to 5 minutes a side will do. Ground beef should reach 160F internally — check rather than trust the clock.
- Seasoning levelOne and a half teaspoons salt for two pounds works out to roughly 1 percent by weight if measured as table salt (nearer 0.5 percent with coarse flake salt), which is close to standard modern seasoning. Add more only to taste.
- Yield and platingSix patties of roughly 5 ounces each, so six modest servings or four generous ones. "A crown shape" appears to mean arranging them in a ring around the edge of the platter, leaving the middle for a vegetable or a sauce.
The name is generally traced to Dr. James Henry Salisbury, an American physician who in the decades after the Civil War promoted a diet built on finely minced lean beef, on the theory that vegetables and starches fermented in the gut and caused disease. His patients were told to eat chopped beef, broiled, several times a day, and to drink hot water with it. What the doctor prescribed as therapy the hotel kitchens took up as a menu item, and by the time this book was compiled "Salisbury steak" seems generally to have meant a good grade of beef minced, shaped and broiled / no sauce, no breadcrumbs, no onion. The gravy-smothered version familiar from mid-twentieth-century American diners and frozen dinners came later, and might be said to stand closer to a German-style beef patty than to the ascetic dish that carried the doctor's name.