# steak tartar(e)

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/steak-tartar-e/10476>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [April 16, 2000, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/steak-tartar-e/10476 "2000-04-16T02:00:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![gooley](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/eb9ed0/32.png) [@gooley](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gooley)\
**Post date:** [April 16, 2000, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/steak-tartar-e/10476/1 "2000-04-16T02:00:00Z")

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I recall dimly having read somewhere that  
the dish we call “steak tartare” (spellings  
vary) or the like isn’t really descended  
from the raw meat eaten by Tartar invaders.  
It’s supposedly the invention of a Romantic  
Era French novelist, who made it up out of  
whole cloth (whether Tartars ate raw meat,  
kept under the saddle or not) as a gimmick  
in a novel of his – the sort of dish that  
a barbaric man would enjoy. Afterwards,  
French chefs tried preparing the stuff and  
found it good. Is there a trace of truth  
to this? Was there such a novelist and  
such a novel, and was a raw-beef dish  
unknown or long-defunct in Europe before  
that novel was published?

Mark. Gooley  
[gooley@gator.net](mailto:gooley@gator.net)  
took his version

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**Author:** ![C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b2d939/32.png) [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)\
**Post date:** [April 16, 2000, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/steak-tartar-e/10476/2 "2000-04-16T02:07:00Z")

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Check out: [What do steak tartare, tartar sauce, and dental tartar have in common?](http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mtartar.html)  
… in the Mailbag.

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**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\
**Post date:** [April 16, 2000, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/steak-tartar-e/10476/3 "2000-04-16T02:31:00Z")

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I don’t know about steak tartare, but raw meat dishes are traditional in the near East and parts of southeastern Europe. Jeff Smith has a recipe for Kibbe, made with raw lamb, onions, and spices, in his book **The Frugal Gourmet on our Immigrant Ancestors**. He says the dish is Lebanese, but I believe that they have a similar traditional dish in the former Yugoslavia.

* * *

Work is the curse of the drinking classes. (Oscar Wilde)

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**Author:** ![gooley](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/eb9ed0/32.png) [@gooley](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gooley)\
**Post date:** [April 16, 2000, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/steak-tartar-e/10476/4 "2000-04-16T23:08:00Z")

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[QUOTE]  
Originally posted by bibliophage:  
\*\*I don’t know about steak tartare, but raw meat dishes are traditional in the near East and parts of southeastern Europe. […]

Ah. So it wouldn’t have taken much  
inventiveness to re-invent raw-meat dishes,  
and the French presumably had had some  
exposure to Eastern European visitors  
(in Poland and Russia and probably many  
other places, French was the language of  
the upper classes then, right?). This makes  
me think that I’m (or whatever source I had  
was) probably mistaken: maybe such foods  
wouldn’t be thought exotic enough. The  
Mail Bag article doesn’t really help (I  
read it first thing, as I should have  
mentioned in my original posting), though  
it’s interesting in its own right.

Mark.  
[gooley@gator.net](mailto:gooley@gator.net)