cube steak

A. Maberry maberry at U.WASHINGTON.EDU
Tue Jul 17 03:11:50 UTC 2001


On Mon, 16 Jul 2001, Alice Faber wrote:
>
> This is exactly the implement I had in mind. I've seen them in some kind of
> metal also (cast alumimin(i)um?). They're obviously easier to describe if
> you've seen an exemplar relatively recently.

I have exactly the same kitchen tool. The only thing I've ever used it for
is for pounding garlic and spices into round steak to make grillades.

What I was wondering is where the term "cube steak" comes from and I guess
it might come from the fact that a cube shaped mallet with pyramid shaped
points (the ones on mine are 4 sided and are in larger and smaller sizes)
was used to tenderize it. That seems like a bit of a stretch to me, to
transfer the cube shape of the tenderizing mallet to the tenderized meat.
I had speculated to myself after I had posed the original question that
perhaps it came from the fact that a butcher took a literal cube (2x2x2 or
what ever size cube by weight) of tough meat and tenderized it until it
became a piece the thickness of a rather thin steak (since it seemed to me
that most commercial "cube steaks" were pretty near the same thickness).
But this is all pure speculation.

allen
maberry at u.washington.edu



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