Porterhouse steak

In the late fourteenth century, labourers who specialized in carrying heavy things from place to place came to be known as porters, a word that derives from the Latin portare, meaning to carry. Porters, not surprisingly, tended to be large men with small wages who could only afford to quench their thirst with a cheap drink called entire, so named because it was supposed to be flavoured like three different kinds of beer and therefore had a “whole” or “entire” taste. In time, entire came to be so associated with porters that it acquired the nickname porter’s beer, first recorded in the early eighteenth century and later shortened to porter. By the mid eighteenth century, taverns selling porter were called porterhouses, and by the late eighteenth century porterhouses had acquired a reputation for serving hearty fare such as pork chops and steaks. One such porterhouse—Morrison’s Porterhouse, located in New York—popularized a cut of beef located next to the sirloin, and it was this steak that came to be known as porterhouse steak in the early nineteenth century.

A premium segment of beef, acquired from the loin section of the animal, that encompasses both the tenderloin and a substantial portion of the filet, is commonly referred to as a T-bone steak. This type of steak is considered rather costly, particularly when it is sliced to a thickness of more than one inch.