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Beef, French, Stewed
Beat two pounds of rump steak with a rolling-pin to make it tender, and then lard it thoroughly with strips of bacon. Place it in a stewpan with some good stock, spice, salt, garlic, thyme, parsley, and half a pint of white wine. Stew gently for four or five hours; take out the meat, glaze it, and put away to cool. Next reduce the stock until it jellies, clear it with white of egg, flavour with lemon, and strain through a jelly-bag into a pie-dish. Serve the meat cold, garnished with pieces of the jelly, cut up into squares or diamonds. Probable cost, 3s. 6d. Sufficient for four or five persons.
This is a French bœuf à la mode in miniature: a long, gentle braise served cold in its own clarified jelly. The hinge is the stewing temperature — the liquid must never do more than shiver, or the beef will tighten and the finished jelly will be cloudy no matter how you clear it.
- Cut of meatIn a Victorian British book "rump steak" is often a thick piece cut from the rump rather than a thin frying steak, and the beating, larding and four-to-five-hour stewing here point that way. A 2 lb piece in one block — top rump, silverside or brisket — will suit; anything sliced thin will not survive the cooking.
- LardingLarding means threading strips of fat bacon through the meat with a larding needle. If you have neither needle nor patience, bard instead — tie sheets of fatback or streaky bacon around the joint. The fat is what keeps a lean cut from going dry and stringy over a long braise.
- Half a pint of white wineAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups or 285 ml. Use a dry white.
- Stock quantityThe recipe never says how much, which is genuinely open. Enough to come two-thirds up the meat is the working answer — roughly 1½ imperial pints — since too much dilutes the jelly you are trying to concentrate later.
- Heat and timeFour to five hours at a bare simmer; the recipe puts the meat in a stewpan, so on the hob. If you prefer the oven for steadier heat, a low setting in the region of 275–300F approximates a bare simmer, but the book gives no oven instruction or temperature. The meat is ready when a skewer meets no resistance.
- GlazingTo glaze here means brushing the meat with some of the stock reduced to a sticky, syrupy glaze, giving a dark shine. It is cosmetic, and you can skip it if you are short of reduced stock for the jelly.
- Clearing with white of eggWhisk one or two egg whites (with the crushed shells, if you like) into the cold, degreased, reduced stock, bring it slowly to a bare simmer without stirring, and let the raft form and set for ten minutes. Ladle it through a scalded jelly-bag or a sieve lined with damp muslin, and do not squeeze.
- Whether it will setA stock made only from lean beef may not jelly. A split calf's or pig's foot, or a couple of veal knuckle bones, added to the braise gives the gelatine the recipe assumes; otherwise soften a few sheets of leaf gelatine into the cleared, warm stock.
- ServingChill the pie-dish of jelly until firm, turn it out and cut it into squares or diamonds. The recipe says only that the meat is served cold, garnished with pieces of the jelly, and gives four to five portions.
- The cost line3s. 6d. is three shillings and sixpence, the probable cost at the time the book was compiled; it serves as a rough guide only, and the entry says nothing about the kind of household it was aimed at.
Cold larded beef set in its own clarified jelly is closely related to bœuf à la mode, the long-braised French pot-roast that ran with garlic, thyme, wine and a knuckle of veal, though the recipe itself records no line of descent. In compendia of this kind "French" often works less as an attribution to any particular region than as a shorthand for a set of techniques — larding, glazing, clearing stock with egg white, straining through a jelly-bag — associated with trained cooking. The braising liquid, which might otherwise be discarded, becomes the garnish. Cold larded beef of this kind appeared at the sideboard and the buffet supper, and had to be started ahead because the jelly needed time to set.