Steak is a part of the same sanguine mythology as wine. It is the heart of meat, it is meat in its pure state; and whoever partakes of it assimilates a bull-like strength. The prestige of steak evidently derives from its quasi-rawness. In it, blood is visible, natural, dense, at once compact and sectile. One can well imagine the ambrosia of the Ancients as this kind of heavy substance which dwindles under one's teeth in such a way as to make one keenly aware at the same time of its original strength and of its aptitude to flow into the very blood of man. Full-bloodedness is the raison d'etre of steak; the degrees to which it is cooked are expressed not in calorific units but in images of blood; rare steak is said to be saignant (when it recalls the arterial flow from the cut in the animal's throat), or bleu (and it is now the heavy, plethoric, blood of the veins which is suggested by the purplish colour-the superlative of redness). Its cooking, even moderate,
cannot openly find expression; for this unnatural state, a euphemism is needed: one says that steak is á point, 'medium', and this in truth is understood more as a limit than as a perfection.