[Sca-cooks] Salisbury Steak

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Phlip:
>Ene bichizh ogsen baina shuu...
>
>>  Made according to Salisbury's recipe, it's actually quite delicious.
>>  Unfortunately, school and hospital food services don't appear to
>>  follow that recipe ;-).
>>
>>  Adamantius
>
>So, what's the original recipe, and what's the modern obnoxious variant? I
>seem to remember, as a kid, getting some quite tasty salisbury steaks at
>restaurants, and being utterly turned off by them (over-cooked but not
>burned hamburger with slime gravy and an elderly bit of canned mushroom) in
>boarding school.

Well, I found this in Ernst Jutte's rather peculiar 1936 treatise 
"You Must Eat Meat", an amusing little cry to Heaven against the 
evils of vegetarianism. It ain't good science, a lot of it, but it 
does contain a pretty comprehensive account of the work of James H. 
Salisbury, a description of his diet, which is a lot like the Atkins 
Diet, high in protein, low in carbs at first, with a gradual increase 
in both carbs and fibrous vegetables until you're eating a relatively 
normal diet, but never exceeding a carb intake level where you're 
still feeling the benefits of the diet, whatever level that turns out 
to be for you. It also counsels the intake of clear, warm beverages, 
like black coffee and straight tea, consomme, and a glass of warm 
water to flush the alimentary canal 1/2 hour before each meal.

I can actually see how this might work for some people. It's really 
kinda funny reading accounts from people like Upton Sinclair, about 
how he'd lost a lot of weight and fat, had put on muscle, and felt 
great, after six months on the Salisbury Diet. You just know that if 
there'd been websites in his day, he'd be saying all this on one.

Anyway, the instructions for the steak as they appear in Jutte's 1936 
book, which may or may not be a quote from Salisbury:

"PREPARATION OF THE SALISBURY STEAK

The best part of the beef should be taken -- steaks cut through the 
center of the round are the richest and best for the purpose. 
Previous to chopping, the fat, tendons, and connective tissue strands 
should be cut away.

The pulp should not be pressed firmly together before broiling, else 
it will taste livery. Enough to satisfy the appetite, or about one 
half pound for each meal, may be served. Broil slowly and moderately 
well. The inside may still be pink but should not be raw. Serve on 
hot platter and season with butter, mustard or pepper and salt. A 
little Worcestershire sauce, or lemon juice, may be used, if desired."

I would say the key to a good Salisbury Steak, and the areas where 
industrial food service consistently fails at it, is in overhandling 
the meat, pressing it into a fibrous mass instead of letting gravity, 
meat juices/gelatins and albumen do most of that work.

I've gotten a little particular myself while experimenting with 
hamburgers, both in using some early German techniques calling for 
the meat to be pounded, folded up, and pounded out again, rather than 
using ground meat, and I've also found that, when using commercially 
ground meat from the supermarket, trying to keep those extruded 
strands as much in line with each other in the formed patty as 
humanly possible, rather than kneading the meat into a homogeneous 
mass, produces a better effect.

Either way, it's supposed to be a fairly delicate dish, and when you 
treat it like kneaded dough, it isn't. You also get enormously better 
results from hand-chopped meat rather than with ground beef, and 
scraping the pulp from a steak, with a serrated steak knife or some 
such, another old standby that has long been a technique used for 
preparing meat for invalids, also works extremely well.

I think overcooking, and braising the meat in the chemical gravy, are 
other culprits for why this dish is so bad in school cafeterias, on 
airplanes, etc.

I do think it's both ironic and funny that this started out as Spa 
cuisine, became reviled after years of industrial abuse in 
cafeterias, and is probably now about ready to end up back on the 
menu of four-star restaurants for $39.50 a serving, suitably gussied 
up.

Adamantius





-- 
  "Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
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