"Opinicus" > wrote ...
> "TOliver" > wrote ...
>
>> In my family household, the men liked rare, the women medium, and women
>> (and female children) always were favored with the tenderest cuts.
>
> So that's the logic then? A way to get different degrees of doneness and
> tenderness in a single cut so as to appeal to different tastes? That makes
> sense--sort of.
>

I'll opine that "sort of" was about as close to making sense around my
childhood home as it came...

In the South at least, young women until recently sort of culturally avoided
rare meat, the province of the males in the household, yet tradition
required that females receive the tenderst cuts. Add the matter of portion
size, and the Tbone became to sort of ideal choice. We still occasionally
dine in a rural steakhouse/saloon which continues to feature both a TBone
and Porterhouse "for 2" (along with a traditoinal accompaniment in season,
sliced tomatoes interleaved with paper thin slices of red onion).

I continue to place more credibility in the theory that only the power saw
really popularized the Tbone, quite an effort to cut with a handsaw....

TMO