TARTARE

Steak tartare, despite its name, has nothing to do with the Tatars or Mongols. The mythology surrounding it, like the claim that the meat was once put under a Tatar’s saddle to tenderize in the sweat of a horse that had been ridden all day, that the Tatars ate it before a decisive battle, and that it was served on round leather shields, is pure fiction and marketing! This dish, in its classic form, emerged in the nineteenth century, and the debate over whether it was first served in New York or Paris remains unsettled. Even as it is undisputed that the dish gained much more popularity in France than in the United States, its true origins are not European.

It is a distant, indirect descendant of the Levantine dish kibbeh nayeh, which was very popular in areas of Lebanon and Palestine, and later in the Ottoman Empire (where it became known as çiğ köfte), which was the version that European travelers were introduced to. Kibbeh nayeh was made from raw, finely ground lamb (or sometimes beef) mixed with bulgur, ground and dried wheat, onions, cedar or pine nuts, olive oil, pepper, salt, cinnamon, and aromatic herbs like mint, basil, and marjoram. Many travelers, when presented with a spread of flatbreads and a variety of dips, found kibbeh nayeh delicious without realizing they were eating raw meat! This applies not only to naive nineteenth-century inhabitants but also to modern times, as Maureen Abood, a renowned Lebanese-American culinary expert, mentions: ‘Growing up, I never knew I was eating raw meat. I simply knew that kibbeh nayeh was incredibly good.’

However, we cannot claim that the idea of serving raw meat was borrowed directly from the Christian quarter in Istanbul. It is more likely that as European chefs became accustomed to serving increasingly rare steaks (steaks cooked to a ‘well-done’ state are still far less popular compared to those served a little ‘rare’), some chefs realized there was no need to bother with cooking the meat for a few seconds—raw meat would be consumed, especially if it was served with a spicy sauce!

The true authorship of the term ‘à la tartare’ can confidently be attributed to the thirteenth-century historian and traveler Jean de Joinville, who left us the following account in his famous work Life of St. Louis: ‘They brought all sorts of meats into the camp. They eat everything. Those women that have children, carry them from place to place, tend them, and prepare the food for those that go into battle. The raw meat they put between their saddles and their horse cloths, and when the blood is well out of it, they eat it quite raw. What they cannot eat, they throw into a leather bag; and when they are hungry, they just open the bag, and eat the stalest first. For this reason, I saw a Khwarizmian, one of the Persian emperor's followers, who used to keep guard over us in prison, and whenever he opened his bag, we used to hold our noses, for we could not endure the stench that came out of the bag.’ Although the process described by the historian now appears very debatable, Joinville's widely read accounts contributed to the creation of the stereotype: the inhabitants of the distant Eastern steppe (whom Europeans commonly referred to as ‘Tatars’) exclusively consumed raw meat. So what name could they possibly call this dish? Of course, à la tartare! It's exotic, and it doesn't put any blame on the inventor; it's not about them experimenting with the public—it's about them using ancient, foreign recipes.

Traditionally, steak tartare, also known as beefsteak tartare, consists of freshly minced beef pressed into a round shape with salt and pepper, served with raw egg, herbs, mushrooms, and sauces (primarily Worcestershire). In many countries, such as Turkey, you can't get steak tartare or its equivalents today because the World Health Organization recommends not consuming dishes with raw meat and eggs from public menus in order to combat salmonellosis. But in countries where haute cuisine is respected, such as France and Kazakhstan, no one attempts to interfere with the culinary art using sacrilegious sanitary regulations, and steak tartare remains popular and beloved here.