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Sirloin Steak with Fried Apples
1 sirloin steak weighing 2 lbs. ½ teaspoonful white pepper 3 tablespoonfuls melted Crisco 1 teaspoonful salt Flour 4 tart apples Milk Mix salt and pepper with melted Crisco, then rub mixture into steak and let steak lie in it twenty minutes. Broil it over a clear fire till done and serve surrounded with fried apples. Peel and core and slice apples, then dip in milk, toss in flour, and drop into hot Crisco to brown. VEGETABLES I N the vegetable kingdom the cereals form a very important part of our diet, by supplying chiefly the carbohydrates or heat giving matter. Another nutritious group termed pulse, are those which have their seed enclosed in a pod. The most familiar are peas, beans, and lentils; peas and beans are eaten in the green or unripe state as well as in the dried. Vegetables included in the pulse group are very nourishing if they can be digested, they contain a large amount of flesh forming matter, usually a fair amount of starch, but are deficient in fat. Peas and beans also contain sulphur and tend to produce flatulence when indulged in by those of weak digestion. Lentils contain less sulphur, and do not produce this complaint so readily. The more succulent vegetables include tubers, as potatoes and Jerusalem artichokes, leaves, stems, and bulbs, as cabbages, spinach, celery, and onions, roots and flowers, as carrots, parsnips, and cauliflower. These are very valuable on account of the mineral matter, chief of which are the potash salts, so necessary to keep the blood in a healthy condition. Care should be taken in cooking vegetables not to lose the salts. Steaming is preferable to boiling, by preserving the juices, though it does not tend to improve the color of green vegetables. A little lemon juice added to the water in which new potatoes are boiling improves their color. Mint is sometimes cooked with new potatoes. To secure a good color in vegetables when cooked, careful cleaning and preparation before cooking is essential. Earthy roots, such as potatoes, turnips, and carrots, must be both well scrubbed and thoroughly rinsed in clean water before peeling. From all vegetables, coarse or discolored leaves and any dark or decayed spots should be carefully removed before cooking.
Potatoes should be peeled thinly, or, if new, merely brushed or rubbed with a coarse cloth to get the skin off. Vegetables Turnips should be thickly peeled, as the rind in these is hard and woody. Carrots and salsify, unless very old, need scraping only. After the removal of the skin, all root vegetables (except those of the onion kind) should be put in cold water till wanted. Potatoes, artichokes, and salsify especially, must not remain a moment out of water after peeling, or they will turn a dark color, and to the water used for the two last, a little salt and lemon juice should be added in order to keep them white.
Root vegetables should be boiled with the lid of the pan on, green vegetables should be boiled with the lid of the pan off, for the preservation of the color. ½ cupful Crisco
A straightforward broiled steak with a sweet-savory garnish; the only real complications are the stray text and the vagueness of "till done."
- Ignore the trailing pagesEverything after "drop into hot Crisco to brown" belongs to the book's introduction to the Vegetables chapter and has nothing to do with the steak. The orphaned "1½ cupful Crisco" at the very end is a stray measurement line from the page; whether it was meant as the frying quantity for the apples or belongs to a neighbouring recipe cannot be told from the text.
- CriscoStill sold, and still behaves the same way, though it is no longer made with partially hydrogenated oil. Any neutral fat with a high smoke point works for both the rub and the frying; butter alone will scorch at apple-frying heat.
- "Broil over a clear fire"This means direct radiant heat from a fire that has burned down past smoking flame — a charcoal grill at full heat, or a modern broiler with the rack set 3-4 inches from the element. Not a covered grill with the lid down.
- "Till done"For a 2 lb sirloin roughly 1½ inches thick, allow about 5-6 minutes a side for medium-rare and pull it at 130-135F on an instant-read thermometer; 145F is medium. Rest it 8-10 minutes before slicing across the grain.
- The pepper1½ teaspoons of white pepper on 2 lb of steak is assertive by modern taste and unusual on beef. Black pepper at the same quantity is closer to what most cooks expect, and half that amount is defensible.
- The 20-minute rubThe recipe has the steak lying in the seasoned fat for twenty minutes. That is an awkward interval for salt: long enough to draw moisture to the surface, not long enough for it to be reabsorbed, so blot the surface dry before the steak goes over the fire — a dry surface browns, a wet one steams.
- The applesUse a firm tart variety — Granny Smith, Northern Spy. Avoid cooking apples such as Bramley, which break down. Slice into rings about ⅜ inch thick so they hold shape. Milk then flour gives a thin coating that sets fast; fry at about 350F, in batches, and drain on paper rather than crowding the pan.
- YieldFour servings, with an apple apiece.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was published by Procter & Gamble to teach American cooks what to do with a fat that had no precedent in their kitchens: a solid, white, shelf-stable vegetable shortening introduced in 1911, offered as a replacement for both lard and butter in frying and baking. That commercial purpose shows here, where a two-pound steak is asked to carry three tablespoons of melted Crisco as a rub — a job lard or butter had traditionally done, and one the fat is not especially good at. Pairing beef with fried apples, on the other hand, is much older than the book and much older than shortening: apple rings fried in drippings are documented chiefly as an accompaniment to pork, the acid and sugar cutting the fat. The recipe is followed by the opening essay of the Vegetables chapter, which treats cookery as applied nutrition — carbohydrates, "flesh forming matter," potash salts — the vocabulary of the domestic-science movement then reshaping how American recipe books talked about food.