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BEEF (a la Flamande)
Select a piece of brisket, weighing about seven or eight pounds, preferably choosing that portion of the brisket which contains the gristle. Trim this meat and put it into a stewpan with five slices of bacon, two carrots, one onion, a bunch of savoury herbs, four cloves, four whole allspice, two blades of mace, and a little weak stock, or water; simmer very gently for four hours in a closely-shut pan. At the end of this period, strain the liquor, set aside a portion for sauce, and boil the remainder over a brisk fire until it is reduced to a glaze, with which to glaze the meat. Garnish the joint with cut pieces of boiled turnips, carrots, and mushrooms, and pour round it sauce prepared from the liquor set aside for this purpose. Probable price, 7d. to 8d. per pound.
BEEF (a la Mode), No. 1.
Any fleshy part of beef or veal will do for this dish; but, of course, the finer the meat is the better will be the stew. A piece of the rump or buttock of beef we should consider most suitable; of veal, either the fillet or the most gristly part of the breast. About six or seven pounds is the usual quantity prepared. Rub the meat well with some mixed spice, salt, and a little flour, and put it in a stewpan, into which have been previously placed some thin slices of streaked bacon. As it is desirable that the bacon should not touch the bottom of the stewpan, it would be better to place a few skewers in it for the bacon to rest on. Cover the meat also with slices of bacon, some good gravy (about a pint and a half), and a little vinegar. Stew very gently for two hours, then add a seasoning of cloves, mace, pepper, mushrooms, and a dozen small onions, half roasted. Cover the saucepan tightly down, and simmer until tender. Put the meat in a deep dish, strain the gravy over it, and serve very hot. Should veal be used, the mushrooms should be omitted, and lemon-peel substituted. Time to simmer, from three to four hours. Sufficient for seven or eight persons.
BEEF (a la Mode), No. 2.
Take eight or ten pounds of beef (the rump or buttock), or the same weight of a breast of veal. Divide it into neat pieces of three or four ounces in weight. Put it into a large stewpan with four ounces of good beef dripping; but first make the dripping hot, and flour the meat. Add a couple of large onions, minced very fine, dredge with flour, and stir with a wooden spoon for about ten minutes, or until the contents of the pan be thick; then pour in about one gallon of water. Do this gradually, stirring all together. Bring it to a boil; then skim, and add one salt-spoonful of ground black pepper, two of allspice, and two bay-leaves. Set the pan where it will stew gently for about three hours. When the meat is tender, serve. Sufficient for ten or twelve persons.
BEEF (a la Mode), No. 3. (Bath recipe) Take three pounds of beef (any part will do, but the rump is the best), cut away all fat, and trim nicely. Take a few cloves, a tea-spoonful of black pepper, a blade of mace, and a salt-spoonful of allspice. Pound them thoroughly, and add half a small tea-spoonful of cayenne pepper, some minced sweet herbs, and a shallot. Put these ingredients into a dish, previously rubbed with garlic, and cover them with vinegar. Cut fat bacon into long strips, and lard the beef, on both sides if necessary, first dipping each strip of bacon into the vinegar, and well covering them with the seasoning. Put the meat into a baking-pan, with the remainder of the herbs and spice, a bit of butter rolled in flour, and one pint of water. Cover the top of the pan, and bake in an oven. When tender, strain the gravy, and serve the beef with pickles on the top. It makes an excellent cold dish, but should be served hot with gravy at first. Probable cost, 1s. per pound. Sufficient for five or six persons.
BEEF (a la Mode), No. 4. (French recipe.) Take a large flat stewpan, and put into it two ounces of good butter. When the butter begins to froth, add a table-spoonful of flour, and stir until the two are well mixed and of a fine golden colour. Next lay in a piece of rump of beef, or any other tender part, three pounds in weight. Fry gently, being very careful that the meat does not stick to the pan. Add by degrees a pint of rich stock, well flavoured with carrots, savoury herbs, onions, bay-leaves, salt, and pepper. When preferred, the vegetables may be put in whole, instead of merely flavouring the gravy with them, and they look very nice when used to garnish the meat. In France, they greatly increase the quantity of vegetables by adding tomatoes, when in season, small cucumbers, mushrooms, and green peas. Veal dressed this way, with the addition of new potatoes, is excellent, and is generally preferred to beef. Time to stew, four or five hours. Probable cost, 4s. Sufficient for four or five persons.
Five braises grouped under one headword, all built on the same logic: a large cut of cheap beef, fat laid under and over it, whole spice, and hours of the barest simmer. The hinge in every one is the word gently — the liquid should barely move, or the brisket and rump tighten and go dry rather than gelatinous.
- The brisket with the gristleThat is the point end (the deckle), the fattier, connective-tissue-rich half rather than the flat. It is exactly the right choice: the gristle is collagen, and four hours of low heat turns it to gelatin. Modern flat-cut brisket at the same weight will be leaner and drier.
- Blades of mace and whole allspiceA blade of mace is one piece of the dried aril of nutmeg, roughly 1/2 teaspoon ground as a substitute, though whole blades are worth seeking out for a clear braise. Tie the cloves, allspice and mace in muslin with the herb bunch so you are not fishing them out of the finished sauce.
- Salt-spoonfulA salt-spoon is about a quarter teaspoon. So No. 2 wants roughly 1/4 teaspoon black pepper and 1/2 teaspoon allspice for eight to ten pounds of meat — restrained by current taste, and worth increasing.
- Streaked bacon and the skewer trickStreaked (streaky) bacon is the fatty belly cut; unsmoked pancetta or a plain slab bacon works. Laying skewers on the pan floor keeps the bacon from scorching — a metal trivet or a bed of thick onion slices does the same job.
- No. 3 gives no oven settingThe book leaves the temperature to the cook, and gives no time either, only "when tender." A covered pan of larded beef in a pint of water suits a slow oven, in the region of 300-325F.
- The glaze in the FlamandeReducing braising liquor to a glaze over a brisk fire happens fast at the end and burns faster. Reduce until it coats a spoon and stops there; strain and defat first, or the glaze will break rather than shine.
- No. 2 is a stew, not a jointThree or four ounce pieces in a gallon of water is a great deal of liquid — expect thin gravy despite the flour. Use half the water, or plan to reduce it hard once the meat is tender.
- Yields and costThe stated yields hold up: No. 1 serves seven or eight, No. 2 ten or twelve, No. 3 five or six, No. 4 four or five. The prices are Victorian retail figures — per pound for the Flamande and No. 3, a flat sum for No. 4 — and have no modern meaning beyond telling you brisket was cheap and rump was not.
À la mode here has nothing to do with ice cream; it is simply "in the fashion," and bœuf à la mode was one of the great set pieces of French bourgeois cooking — a larded joint braised with wine or vinegar, aromatics and calf's foot, served hot the first day and sliced cold in its own jelly the next, as No. 3 recommends. Cassell's habit of printing four numbered versions side by side, one of them labelled a Bath recipe and another simply "French," shows how these late-Victorian dictionaries worked: they collected whatever was in circulation, English adaptation and Continental original together, and let the cook choose by price and by the size of the household. The Flemish version, with its brisket, bacon and glaze, belongs to the same family of long low braises that made gristly forequarter cuts worth buying, and the note that veal done this way "is generally preferred to beef" is a reminder that veal was then an everyday meat rather than a specialist one.