Swiss steak
1
3.7
- noun
- /swɪs steɪk/
- US
:
carne suiza
- The restaurant's special tonight is Swiss steak served with flavorful mashed potatoes.
Examples
-
Josh ordered the chicken and noodles, and I had the Swiss steak.
Fiction book (1992) -
I can't eat my Swiss steak after that.
Fiction book (1997) -
And I remember you used to like your mum's Swiss steak.
-
Well, it's either Swiss steak, meat loaf...
-
"They had both ordered the Swiss steak with Lyonnaise potatoes."
Fiction book (2000) -
- Swiss steak.
-
They fed us U.S. Army rations of Swiss steak, English peas in tiny square tins.
Fiction book (2000) -
For dinner, I decided to cook a delicious Swiss steak with tomato and onion sauce.
-
After a long day, I made myself a comforting plate of Swiss steak braised in rich sauce.
How Tender
Surface Forms
Morphology
A B1 learner who knows 'Swiss' and 'steak' will readily infer this refers to a type/kind of steak (a dish associated with Switzerland), so the basic category is compositional. However, the precise preparation method (tenderized and braised in tomato/onion) and the fixed culinary sense are not predictable from the constituents alone, making the expression only partially transparent.
Etymology
Swiss steak may come from a cooking word 'to swiss', meaning to pound meat to make it 'tender'. Cooks would pound the steak and then cook it slowly in a sauce, so the name came to mean a tender, braised steak.