Spiced Beef
Wash and wipe six pounds of beef cut from the flank. Cover with boiling water; bring to the boiling point and skim. Reduce heat and simmer until meat is tender (time required about five hours), adding the last hour of cooking one-half cup each of carrot, onion and celery cut in dice, two sprays each of parsley and thyme, one of marjoram, six cloves, one-half teaspoon peppercorns and one tablespoon salt. Remove meat and reduce liquor to one and one-half cups; strain. Shred the meat, mix with the liquor and press in a granite, brick-shaped bread pan, packing solidly. When thoroughly cold, serve, cut in thin slices, with Whipped Cream Horseradish Sauce (for recipe see Page 120).
This is pressed beef — a jellied loaf set by the gelatin cooked out of the meat, not by any added binder. Everything depends on reducing the cooking liquor far enough that it sets firm when cold.
- The hinge: reduce the liquor properlyOne and a half cups of strained broth from six pounds of flank should be rich and gelatinous, and should set to a firm jelly on a cold saucer. Test a spoonful in the refrigerator before mixing it with the meat; if it stays loose, keep reducing, or the loaf will crumble when sliced.
- "Beef cut from the flank"Flank in cookbooks of this period generally meant the coarser, collagen-rich meat of the belly and side rather than the single trimmed muscle sold today as flank steak; cuts such as beef navel or brisket point are closer substitutes. Modern flank steak is lean and will give a drier loaf with less gelatin.
- Cooking timeFive hours at a bare simmer is realistic for six pounds of connective-tissue-heavy beef. Keep the water at 180–190F with barely a tremble; a rolling boil toughens the muscle fibers and clouds the broth you are about to reduce.
- Aromatics go in late for a reasonAromatics go in late -- Adding the carrot, onion, celery and herbs only in the final hour keeps their flavor fresh in a broth that will afterwards be heavily concentrated. Vegetables simmered the full five hours give a flatter, sweeter stock.
- "A granite, brick-shaped bread pan"Granite means graniteware — speckled enamel over steel, the standard cheap kitchenware of the period. Any 9x5-inch loaf pan works; line it with plastic wrap or parchment so the cold loaf lifts out cleanly.
- Press it under weight"Packing solidly" is best done with help: cover the surface, set a board or second pan on top and weight it with a couple of cans, then refrigerate overnight. Without weight there will be air pockets and the slices will fall apart.
- Cool it quicklyThe original assumes a cold larder. Shred the hot meat, mix, press, and get the pan into the refrigerator within about two hours rather than leaving a warm meat loaf standing on the counter.
- Yield and servingSix pounds of raw flank yields roughly a 3-pound pressed loaf — cold-cut slices for eight to twelve people. It keeps three or four days refrigerated and slices thinnest straight from the cold.
Pressed and spiced beef of this kind belongs to a long British and Irish tradition of turning tough, cheap, gelatinous cuts into something that could be sliced cold on a sideboard — the same logic behind brawn, potted meats and jellied tongue. Note what this version leaves out: older spiced beef recipes generally mean meat rubbed for days with salt, sugar and saltpetre before cooking, whereas here the "spiced" refers only to the cloves, peppercorns and herbs added at the end of a plain simmer. A quick, unsalted loaf set cold like this fits the pattern of American household cookery around 1900, as iceboxes spread and long home curing became less common. The appeal is practical: a large cheap piece of flank simmered once gave a cold dish that could be sliced over several days, and horseradish sauce was a familiar accompaniment to cold beef.