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December 1
Menu: Oyster Bouillon; Baked Beefsteak; Fried Beets; Baked Potatoes; Grapefruit and Endive Salad; Nougat Ice Cream; Coffee Baked Beefsteak-Cut 2 pounds of sirloin, 1/2 inch thick. Mix 1 cup breadcrumbs, 1 tablespoon Crisco, 1 tablespoon chopped parsley, ½ tablespoon chopped onion, 1/2 teaspoon each of salt, pepper, and red pepper, 1/2 teaspoon kitchen bouquet, and moisten with stock. Spread this over steak and roll it up, fastening with skewers or tying, and put on rack in roasting pan. Add 1/2 cup stock, and bake ½ hour, basting often. Place on hot platter, and pour around it sauce made from 2 tablespoons Crisco and 3 tablespoons flour blended together, with salt and pepper to taste, and 1½ cups beef stock cooked until boiling, then strained and added to 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce.
A rolled, stuffed steak from the December menu calendar in Procter & Gamble's promotional cookbook; the heading "Coffee" belongs to the surrounding dinner menu, not to the beef. The original gives no oven temperature and no yield, so both need filling in.
- Oven temperatureThe original gives none. 350F, at the lower end of what the period would have called a moderate oven, suits a small roast; hotter risks drying the thin sheet of meat before the stuffing warms through.
- Timing and donenessHalf an hour is right for a 2 lb roll of half-inch sirloin at 350F, but judge it by an instant-read thermometer in the meat itself rather than the stuffing: 130-135F for medium-rare, 140F for medium. Sirloin rolled this thin goes grey and tight past that.
- CriscoThe product the book exists to promote. Any neutral solid shortening works; unsalted butter in the crumb stuffing and butter or oil in the sauce roux both taste better, though butter browns and scorches more readily than shortening.
- Red pepperCayenne. Half a teaspoon plus half a teaspoon of black pepper in one cup of crumbs is assertive by modern standards for a beef roll; a quarter teaspoon of cayenne is closer to modern taste.
- Kitchen BouquetA caramel-and-vegetable browning liquid, still sold in the same brown bottle. It is for color and a faint savory depth, not seasoning; a dash of soy sauce or a little browning sauce substitutes.
- Butterflying the steakAsk for the sirloin cut in one broad half-inch sheet, or pound a thicker piece between plastic to an even half inch. Uneven thickness is the main cause of a roll that will not sit tight on the skewers.
- TyingButcher's twine at one-inch intervals is easier to manage than skewers and lets you slice the roll into pinwheels without it collapsing.
- The sauceThis is a plain brown gravy: cook the flour in the fat until it smells nutty, whisk in the stock, boil to thicken, then strain and stir in the Worcestershire off the heat. Add the pan juices from the roasting pan too, which the original quietly leaves behind.
- YieldFour servings, sliced about three-quarters of an inch thick.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was written by Marion Harris Neil for Procter & Gamble to teach American cooks what to do with a product that had no culinary tradition behind it: a hydrogenated cottonseed-oil shortening introduced in 1911, sold as a substitute for both butter and lard. Its "Calendar of Dinners" assigned a full menu to every day of the year, which is why this page carries the stray heading "Coffee" from December 2's bill of fare. The dish itself is a thrifty piece of butcher's craft older than the book: a thin steak spread with a seasoned breadcrumb forcemeat, rolled, and roasted so it eats like a small joint. The same idea appears across nineteenth-century English and American cookery as beef olives, rolled steak, or mock duck, and survives in the Italian-American involtini or braciole and the German Rouladen. The Worcestershire and Kitchen Bouquet in the gravy are period markers, bottled shortcuts kept for browning and depth.