With regard to steak temperatures, medium is pretty much the only one that makes sense. There’s nothing particularly “well done” about a well done steak, most chefs would consider it rather poorly done. Similarly, “rare” steaks aren’t all that rare either, they’re just as common as any other steak.
How did we end up with the rare/medium/well done terminology for steak doneness and what was their original meaning?
I have a dead-tree dictionary here that says that “rare” meaning uncommon, and “rare” meaning slightly cooked, have separate origins and are only coincidentally the same in modern English.
The “rare” that refers to steaks comes from an Old English word “hrer” that means “lightly boiled”.
The other “rare” comes from Latin “rarus”.
The French term for “well done” translates literally as “well-cooked”. If you think of “done” as “cooked” well-done is well and truly cooked.
I think the “re” in refried also means “well and truly” and comes from Spanish. Those beans are well and truly fried, not fried twice.
Interesting question. I never thought about “rare” before. My question is why is label spelled label but table is spelled table. That always trips me up. Lable looks OK to me.
There are other cases where “well” means “very”: well-known, well-worn, well-trod, etc.
Rare, in English, to indicate doneness of meat goes back in print to at least 1615.
Boiled steak!??! The olden English truly were barbarians! 
Perhaps in Old English “lightly boiled” meant sous vide & seared. :dubious:
Hrer meant "lightly cooked. It then turned into rere, but the only “boiled” uses were in reference to eggs.
Two different source words.
Table ultimately borrowed from Latin-- * tabula* =board, plank, etc. which turned into Old French table.
Label from Old French label =ribbon.
I have heard the term “blue meat” used for rare once before. Has anyone else heard it used?
Blue (or bleu) is even rarer than rare. I’m guessing it’s named that because it comes out with a purplish tinge which is “bluer” than the pink of a medium-rare steak.
Absolutely. But blue does not mean rare, but even less done. I like my steaks on the blue side of rare.
Blue rare is a common term, and is often paired as “black and blue” which means charred on the outside and all but raw inside. Think of it as a beef version of seared ahi.
It’s also called Pittsburgh style.
I’ve never heard it in English, as others here have, but I have heard it in French. France has four degrees of doneness: blue, bloody, something I forget, and well-cooked.
As I remember, anyway. I wont be surprised if l’m corrected.
won’t
The Gallagher thing really has nothing at all to do with the thread, but as long as we’re here, I manged to get half my employees to call our co-worker “Kylie”, since, to me, that’s how Kyle should be pronounced. I told him it’s either that or he could start spelling his name Kyel. For an uber-confident guy, this kinda threw him.