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July 29
Menu: Swiss Steak; Mashed Potato; Egg Plant Fritters; Lettuce Salad, Chiffonade Dressing; Strawberry Parfait; Coffee; of Swiss Steak-1 pound steak, 1 cup flour, salt and pepper, 4 skinned tomatoes, 1 sliced onion, and water. Have steak cut 2 inches thick, and pound into it the flour. Put steak into a skillet, with 3 tablespoons Crisco and brown on both sides. Then cover with water, adding sliced onion, tomatoes sliced and closely and let simmer for 3 hours. Just before steak is done add salt and pepper to taste. When done, the gravy is already made and is delicious.
A plain braise, and a good one, though the original text is garbled in a couple of places and the seasoning advice is out of step with current practice. Read it as: flour-pounded steak, browned hard, then covered and cooked low until a fork goes through it.
- The hinge: pound the flour inThe pounding is the point, driving the flour into the meat with a mallet or the edge of a heavy plate to break down the fibres. Skip this and you have a floured steak in liquid rather than a tender one, and the gravy will not thicken from the meat as intended.
- Crisco and what to use insteadCrisco in 1913 was hydrogenated cottonseed oil, sold as a substitute for lard and butter. Three tablespoons of any neutral high-smoke-point oil, or lard, browns the steak identically.
- The cutA 1 lb steak cut 2 inches thick means a piece of round or chuck, not a tender steak. Bottom round or a thick chuck slice is the modern equivalent; anything from the loin will go dry over a long braise.
- The garbled line"tomatoes sliced and closely and let simmer" is a printing error for something like "cover closely and let simmer." Lid on, heat low, barely a tremble on the surface.
- TimeThree hours is more than a 1 lb piece of round usually needs. Start checking at 90 minutes and cook until a fork slides in with no resistance, which is generally two to two and a half hours; past that the meat shreds and the gravy turns pasty.
- Season at the start, not the endThe recipe holds the salt until just before the steak is done. Salt the meat before flouring instead; over a long braise it seasons the meat through rather than sitting on the surface.
- The cup of flourYou will not work a full cup into 1 lb of steak. Spread it on a board, pound the meat into it from both sides, and expect most of it to be left over; add a spoonful of the excess to the pan if the gravy stays thin.
- YieldOne pound of steak with gravy serves two, or three stretched over mashed potatoes or noodles.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was Procter & Gamble's book-length advertisement for its new hydrogenated cottonseed-oil shortening; the day-by-day menus of a "Calendar of Dinners" belong to a related Crisco publication, and the "July 30" on this page belongs to that daily-menu scheme. The dish itself has nothing to do with Switzerland: the name is generally traced to swissing, a textile term for rolling or pressing cloth smooth, applied to the way the meat is pounded and floured before browning. It was a standard American way to make cheap round steak edible.