In the rapid social and economic changes of the 1930s to 1950s, efficient production of a tasty yet inexpensive product was a real boon to households. Maybe it’s time for cube steaks to make a comeback.
April 15, 1947
ANNOUNCING ~ the New Plant Location
of
The Cube Steak Machine Company
ORIGINATORS and SOLE MANUFACTURERS of CUBE STEAK MACHINES
When was the last time you thought of cube steak? This brings to mind 1960s frozen dinners, a treat (if you were a kid) eaten in front of the TV. But cube steaks were a solution to a fairly common problem – beef has always been expensive.
A cube steak is basically a cheap (and therefore tough) cut of beef, like round or chuck steak, tenderized by scoring or piercing to break up the tough fibers. The process was simple: a piece of beef about 1/2-inch thick was scored at 1/4-inch intervals in two directions. Scoring cut up the tough fibers, thereby tenderizing the meat without having to pound or bruise it. Cubing made cheap cuts of meat much more palatable and enjoyable.
The Cube Steak Machine Company was founded by Joseph P. Spang in 1926 in South Boston. Spang invented the cube steak machine, and eventually held 17 patents for the machines and their improvements. The machine was a series of roller blades over a platen. The blades scored the meat surface, then the platen made a quarter-turn so the meat could be scored again at right angles. Although butchers had been scoring or piercing tough meat forever, the machines automated and therefore greatly sped up the process.
To hear Spang and the company describe it, ribeyes or even filet mignon were hardly a match for a well-cubed round steak: “FLAVOR of this steak is increased by the extra cooking surface created by cubing, as the heat quickly sears up into the cuts… This guarantees that excellent flavor that can only be had by cubing… Cube steak thus becomes delicious.”
Although a well-seared cube steak might well be speedy and delicious (“Cooked in a fraction of the time required to cook any other steak”), the real marketing appeal for Spang’s machine was profits – if tougher meat was made more palatable, it could be sold for a higher price. A testimonial from a “widely-known” meat market manager observed that the “cube steak machine is the most profitable piece of equipment offered to the meat trade in the last twenty-five years,” and that he sold more than 1500 pounds of cube steak per week. As a result of “hundreds of unsolicited testimonials from all over the country, on file in our office,” the company was able to assure potential buyers that
“Considering the fact that the cube steak machine not only makes it possible for you to sell a superior product: a more tender steak with a vastly improved flavor, and this, actually ‘at an added margin of profit’ because you can get more for your Cube Steak, it is plain that the Cube Steak Machine pays for itself in a few weeks.”
An ad in a 1930s issue of The Progressive Grocer made it simple: cubing added “large profit to lower-price meat sales – [adding] 5 to 15 cents extra on every pound.”
While making tools to produce economical cuts of meat for Depression-era housewives was important, there was soon a more urgent concern. In 1942, the Cube Steak Machine Company converted its factory in Boston over to war production. Their equipment was converted into machinery to make threaded hex nuts for the duration. In 1947, they resumed their cube steak machine production, but now in a new location – the former QP Signal Co. facility in Needham, on Hillside Avenue.
QP Signal was founded around 1915 by Walter Kerr Queen, a Navy engineer, on Mellen Street, and in 1923 built themselves a new facility on Hillside Avenue. QP Signal made a large variety of valves, machine tools, and measuring equipment. Queen was also notable for being part of Adm. Byrd’s second expedition to the South Pole (more about Queen HERE). When Queen retired in 1945, he liquidated the company and moved to Connecticut. The QP facility on Hillside Avenue was sold to the Cube Steak Machine Company.
Cube Steak Machine Company was definitely a family affair. Joseph Spang was the founder, and his sons Joseph Jr, Carl, William, and Clemens all worked there in the 1940s and 50s. Bill took over as president from his father. Carl was the family tinkerer, working on improving the machines and creating new ones.
Under the leadership of Carl and Bill, the company (later known as the Needham Manufacturing Company) branched out into other forms of food-processing machines. In 1957 Carl received a patent for their automatic “Hamburg Patty Making Machine.” In old, unimproved hamburger patty-making machines, the ground meat that was extruded from the grinder had to be cut into patties by hand. Cube Steak’s new machine automated the process:
“It is attached to the meat grinder and receives the ground meat in the form of a strip that travels by gravity down an inclined tray. When the leading end of the strip engages a properly located switch arm, an electric solenoid is energized and causes the cutting blade to rapidly sever a patty. As the knife reaches the end of its cutting stroke, other circuits are energized so that the knife returns to its starting point from which it repeats the cutting cycle… The knife cannot operate until each patty has cleared the switch arm. The arrangement is such that the fraying of the patties at the edges is prevented.” (Winchester (MA) Star, 5 July 1957)
Oh. How very appetizing.
Cube Steak Machine Company operated in Needham until about 1960, at which point it disappears from the directories and I lose track of it. After Cube Steak, Bill formed the Overseas Development Company and moved to France, later returning to Boston to work in commercial real estate. Carl moved to Ohio in the 1960s to work for Hobart, another manufacturer of food-service machinery. Joseph Jr. had left the company early on and went to work for Gillette Safety Razor Company, where he eventually rose to be chairman of the board. He is best known in the Boston-area business community as the person who saw the huge sales potential of advertising razors at sports events. I do not know who occupied the site in the 1960s and 70s (and if you do know, send me a note!), but in the mid-1980s the former Cube Steak property became the site of Rosemary Ridge.
The idea of machine-processed beef does not exactly make the mouth water, but in the rapid social and economic changes of the 1930s to 1950s, efficient production of a tasty yet convenient and inexpensive product was a real boon to households. And who knows? – maybe it’s time for cube steaks to make a serious comeback. These days, as the price of ground beef approaches $10/pound, inexpensive-yet-delicious has some real appeal.
Gloria Polizzotti Greis, Executive Director, Needham History Center & Museum