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Sirloin Steaks, Casserole Mascotte
Have two sirloin steaks of one and a quarter pounds each. Trim well and flatten nicely. Season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper. Heat in an earthen pan one tablespoon melted butter; lay the steaks in the pan and cook on a hot range for seven minutes on each side. Take them up and keep warm on a dish.
Cut into halves and slice three medium, sound, white onions and place in the pan with the gravy. Season with half teaspoon salt, toss well once in a while as they cook for ten minutes then place the steaks over the onions; pour in half gill hot demi-glace and quarter of a gill claret, adding half pint canned, drained, green peas. Arrange all around the steaks. Cook for five minutes. Sprinkle a teaspoon finely chopped parsley over and send the casserole to the table.
A one-pan steak braise from the era when "casserole" still meant the vessel you cooked in and served from. The only real trap is the cooking time.
- Read "casserole" as the panThe earthen pan is the casserole, and it goes to the table. A heavy enameled cast-iron braiser or a deep skillet does the same job; unglazed earthenware rarely tolerates the direct high heat called for here.
- Seven minutes a side is too longOn a 1.25 lb sirloin roughly an inch thick, fourteen minutes of hard searing plus five more minutes back in the pan lands well past well-done. Sear three to four minutes a side, rest the steaks while the onions cook, and count on the final five minutes in the sauce to finish them; pull at 130F for medium-rare.
- GillsA gill is half a cup. Half a gill of demi-glace is 4 tablespoons; a quarter gill of claret is 2 tablespoons. These are sauce quantities, not braising liquid — the dish is meant to be barely moistened.
- Demi-glaceReduced brown veal stock. Good jarred demi-glace or a concentrated stock reduction both work; a bouillon cube will read salty against the teaspoon of salt already on the steaks.
- ClaretNineteenth-century English and American shorthand for red Bordeaux. Any dry, unoaked red does the job.
- The onions carry the dishThree onions, halved and sliced, ten minutes in the beef fat and pan drippings. Keep the heat moderate and toss them — they should go soft and lightly colored, not scorched, since they are the bed the steaks return to.
- Canned peasHalf a pint drained is about one cup. Canned peas were widely used in this period and need only heating; frozen peas can substitute, added in the last two minutes so they keep their shape.
- YieldTwo 1.25 lb sirloins, sliced across at the table, serve four generously.
The International Cook Book is the work of Alexander Filippini, long a chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its recipes are essentially restaurant cookery written down for households — hence the casual assumption that a cook has demi-glace on hand. The name Mascotte comes from the French garnish repertoire, generally traced to the popularity of Audran's 1880 operetta La Mascotte, after which a run of dishes was christened; in the classic kitchen a garniture Mascotte usually meant artichoke bottoms, potatoes and truffle, so Filippini's onions and green peas are a plainer, more domestic reading of the label. The dish also shows the period's fondness for the single serving vessel: the pan the meat was seared in became the platter.