Ever heard of Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome? It’s apparently still at least a little bit known – enough that even Karen Witemeyer mentioned it in her book To Love a Beast. Well, we featured it on our October 12th episode for the Gibson Girl Review podcast, and the entire scene where the men almost lose their Beefsteak pie inspired me to try making one myself. Watch the one minute version on Instagram!
Beefsteak Pie
The Virginia Housewife
1824
Step One: Make the gravy. The gravy is literally one line in the actual beefsteak pie recipe, totally underselling the importance of it. But, in the interest of making it as realistic as possible, I went ahead and followed the actual recipe that the Virginia Housewife recommends. Which was the most complex gravy recipe I’ve ever seen in my life. Starting with. . .”Take a rasher or two of bacon”. . .a rasher. I definitely had to look that up. According to Merriam Webster, this means either a thin slice of bacon or. . .a portion consisting of several slices. Helpful, right? I went with three slices.
Step 1.1. . .and .2, .3, .4, etc.: Add slices of veal, mutton, or beef over it – I opted for beef since I already had to purchase the steak for the beefsteak. And then I was to add onion, turnips, carrots, celery, thyme, and allspice – none of which had measurements.
Step 1.5ish?…lost track: Put in a little water, put it on the fire, and let it stew until it is brown on the bottom and hissing. . . . it was actually hissing, shockingly, once it was brown on the bottom. And then I was to pour boiling water on it and stew it “an hour and a half; but the time must be regulated by the quantity. Season it with salt and pepper.” I admit I put salt and pepper in ahead of time to make sure it could soak in. And I poured in a whole lot of boiling water since it didn’t specify how much and I knew it would need to boil down.
Step 2.: Cut nice steaks and stew them until half done. . . there was no instruction on how much steak – but after research on different recipes while I was trying to decide which recipe to use, I went with three pounds, and sliced them into pieces a couple of inches wide. I also may not have been thinking clearly and started boiling a large pot of water to boil the steaks until I remembered that stewing didn’t mean boiling. I put the slices of steak in a sauté pan and poured the boiling water over it. Whereupon the topmost slices instantly turned brown because the water was already hot. I may not have thought that through either. Anyway, I did my best to stew the meat, but I’m pretty sure I should have started with cold water and put it on a lot lower temperature.
Step 3: Put a puff paste in the dish, lay in the steaks with a few slices of boiled ham. . .I bought a quarter of brown sugar ham since it is next to impossible to find ham that is not pre-cooked, pre-sliced, and flavored, and took it literally as I layered the steak with a very few slices of ham. And, yes, I used store-bought puff pastry.
Step 4: And I quote: “Season the gravy very high”. Yes, ma’am. I accordingly went back to the gravy, which had been simmering for about an hour, and poured in about the max seasoning I felt I could – not least because I realized there were no instructions to season the pie itself. And then proceeded to let the gravy continue simmering until it had reduced significantly and was about as close to a thickened gravy as I figured it could get without putting actual thickener in it. And then, although it didn’t say to do so, I went ahead and strained it as well.
Step 5: Pour gravy over the steak, cover with more puff pastry, and bake it. The gravy, once it had reduced, made enough to cover the pie about halfway, which I figured was close enough (and, man, was the seasoning strong after boiling down so much!). It didn’t say to cut holes in the top, but based on my expansive experience, I decided that would be best, and I baked it at 375, figuring that was the closest temp to how I would normally bake such a pie. It was already browning after half an hour and I turned the temp down a little and let it cook about 45 minutes longer, keeping a close eye on it, since I figured it would take longer for the beef to be even remotely tender.
Verdict:
A.M.A.Z.I.N.G. Okay, seriously, if I had to do it over again, I would stew the beef a lot more slowly and add some sort of thickener. But I WOULD do it over again. The steak itself might not have had much flavor, but the gravy seasoned it more than enough and it was so good, even though the ‘gravy’ was more like an au jous sauce. I took a page out of Three Men in a Boat and used a spoon to scoop it up, and it was delicious. Both Daniel and Flynn agreed.
Have you ever made Beefsteak Pie?
