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BEEF, BRAISED (a la Mode)
Trim four pounds of rump of beef, insert some strips of larding-bacon, place the meat in a basin, season with salt and pepper, add the juice of half a lemon, a glass of claret, a bay-leaf, a sprig of thyme, and an onion sliced. Let it stand for four or five hours. Take up the meat, strain well, and fry it in one ounce of butter until it is a nice brown. Place the meat on a dish, stir one ounce of flour into the butter in which the meat was fried, let it get brown, then add the marinade as described above, one quart of stock and a bouquet garni; let it come to the boil, and skim. Replace the beef, add two carrots, previously cleaned and cut into slices, also ten small button onions slightly fried. Simmer gently for one and a half to two hours. Dish up the meat, skim the fat off the sauce, and strain over the beef, arrange the carrots and onions in groups round the dish, and serve. Probable cost, 5s.
A textbook French braise dressed in late-Victorian English. Most of it translates directly; the cut and the cooking time are where modern practice diverges.
- The cutBritish "rump" is not the same cut as an American rump roast; it sits nearer the sirloin. Use a 4 lb piece of chuck, brisket, silverside or top round, tied into an even cylinder so it cooks at one rate.
- TimingAn hour and a half to two hours may leave a 4 lb joint firm rather than yielding. At a bare simmer (around 195-200F, never a rolling boil) you may need longer, up to three hours; judge by a skewer sliding in without resistance rather than by the clock.
- Larding baconStrips of firm back fat or fatty unsmoked bacon threaded through the meat with a larding needle. Modern cuts of chuck and brisket carry enough internal fat that this is optional; if you skip it, add a few rashers of bacon to the pot instead.
- A glass of claretVictorian recipe writers meant a wine glass, reckoned at roughly 2 to 2.5 fl oz, though a cook pouring "a glass" may well have been more generous. Claret is red Bordeaux; any dry medium-bodied red does the same work.
- A quart of stockAn imperial quart is 40 fl oz, about 1.14 litres. It should come roughly two-thirds up the meat, not cover it; top up with water if your pot is wide.
- The marinadeFour to five hours at Victorian larder temperature translates to the refrigerator today. "Strain well" means drain and then pat the beef thoroughly dry, or it will steam grey rather than brown in the butter.
- Oven instead of hobA covered casserole at 300-325F holds a steadier simmer than a burner and needs less watching. The recipe assumes a range top; the oven is an easier way to hold the same gentle heat.
- The vegetablesAt the recipe's own hour and a half to two hours the carrots and button onions should hold together. If you cook the joint longer, add them for the final hour so they keep their shape for the garnish; the recipe asks only that the onions be slightly fried first.
- Yield and costServes six to eight with potatoes or noodles. The "probable cost, 5s." is Cassell's household-budget note: five shillings, a substantial sum for one dish at the time.
This is boeuf à la mode, the standard French braise of larded beef marinated in red wine and simmered with carrots and small onions, anglicised for a British kitchen and filed under braising in Cassell's. The name means simply "beef in the fashion," and the dish was well enough established in Paris by the nineteenth century that specialist shops traded under the name, traditionally selling it cold in jelly, the natural gelatine from the shin and trotters usually added to the pot setting the liquid firm as it cooled. Cassell's version drops the long overnight marinade, keeping the shape of the dish while trimming it to a single afternoon's work, which is characteristic of the book's approach: French technique explained to a middle-class household that had a cook but not a chef. The instruction to brown flour in the frying butter before adding liquid is the classic brown roux.