Home › The World's Kitchen › Sirloin Steaks, Casserole
Sirloin Steaks, Casserole
Neatly flatten and trim two sirloin steaks of one and a quarter pounds each. Season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper. Heat one tablespoon butter in an earthen casserole pan, arrange the steaks in it and fry on the range for three minutes on each side; drain off the fat, then add six finely chopped shallots, half a gill white wine and one gill demi-glace. Arrange the same amount Parisian potatoes on one side of the steaks, the same amount glazed onions on the other side, cover the pan and set in a brisk oven for ten minutes. Remove and serve in same pan.
A short Escoffier-style braise-and-finish for steak, written for a cook who already has demi-glace and garnishes on hand. The measurements are in gills and the vessel matters more than it looks.
- The hinge: the panAn "earthen casserole" here is the cooking and serving vessel, not a baked dish. Most modern earthenware will crack or shatter over a direct burner; use a cast-iron braiser or an enamelled shallow casserole that goes from range to oven.
- GillsA gill is half a cup. Half a gill of white wine is 1/4 cup; one gill of demi-glace is 1/2 cup.
- "The same amount" of garnishRead as a gill each — about 1/2 cup of potatoes and 1/2 cup of onions, measured by volume, not weight. The original is genuinely loose here; scale to the size of your pan.
- Brisk ovenThe book gives no temperatures; "brisk" is generally taken as somewhere in the region of 400-450F. Ten minutes at that heat on top of six minutes of frying will carry 1 1/4 lb steaks well past pink unless they are thick; go by an instant-read thermometer rather than the clock.
- Parisian potatoesPotato balls cut with a melon baller or parisienne scoop. They should be parboiled and browned in butter before they meet the steaks — ten minutes in the oven will not cook them from raw.
- Glazed onionsSmall pearl or button onions cooked in butter with a pinch of sugar and a little stock until they take on a shine. Frozen pearl onions work; they will need to be dried and browned first.
- Demi-glaceBrown veal stock reduced with sauce espagnole — a house staple in a professional kitchen of this period. A good reduced veal or beef stock, thickened lightly, stands in; commercial demi-glace concentrate works if you cut the added salt.
- YieldTwo steaks of 1 1/4 lb each serve four, sliced across at the table, with the garnish divided between the plates.
The International Cook Book is the work of Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows the grammar of the Franco-American restaurant kitchen he trained in: a base sauce already made, a garnish already turned and glazed, and a final assembly measured in minutes. "Casserole" in this period names the pot, from the French casse, a pan, and the direction to "serve in same pan" is the whole point -- en casserole meant the dish arrived at table in the vessel it cooked in, which was both a saving of labour and a piece of theatre. Parisian potatoes and glazed button onions were standard garnitures of the era, prepared in advance so that a dish like this could be finished to order. The recipe assumes a reader with demi-glace already made, which suggests it was written as much for hotel and club cooks as for households.