Home › The Principles of Cookery › BEEF, HASH (a la Francaise)
BEEF, HASH (a la Francaise)
Put two ounces of butter and a little flour into a stewpan; dissolve it, and throw in a little chopped onion and a dessert-spoonful of finely-minced parsley; brown, but do not burn the butter. When sufficiently brown, add three-quarters of a pint of good boiling broth, quite free from fat, and a little pepper, salt, and nutmeg. Put in slices of cold beef (two pounds), and allow it to heat gradually by the side of the fire. Thicken the sauce with a little more flour well mixed in a table-spoonful of water, or beat up three eggs mixed with a table-spoonful of lemon-juice; the thickening must be put in when the sauce is near the point of boiling. Time, fifteen minutes to stew. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A reheated-beef dish built on a brown roux and good stock, with the option of an egg-and-lemon liaison at the end. The one thing that will ruin it is boiling after the eggs go in.
- The hinge: the egg liaisonIf you choose the eggs-and-lemon thickening rather than flour, the sauce must never boil once they are added. Take the pan off the heat, temper the beaten eggs with a ladle of hot sauce, stir back in, and hold below a simmer or it will curdle into scrambled threads.
- Three-quarters of a pintAn Imperial pint is 20 fl oz, so this is 15 fl oz, a scant 2 cups. Cassell's is a British book; do not read it as 12 fl oz.
- "By the side of the fire"Range cookery language for gentle, indirect heat. On a modern hob that is the lowest setting, or a heat diffuser. The beef is already cooked and only needs warming through; hard simmering makes it stringy.
- Cold beefTwo pounds of leftover roast, sliced thin across the grain. Trim heavy gristle but leave a little fat, which carries the flavour into the sauce.
- Browning the rouxTwo ounces of butter with flour, taken to a nut brown before the liquid goes in. Butter burns quickly at that stage, so work over moderate heat and stir constantly; a scorched roux turns the whole sauce bitter.
- Broth "free from fat"Chill the stock and lift the solidified fat off, or blot the surface. With a butter roux already in the pan, extra fat will break the sauce.
- Fifteen minutesThat is the total warming time, not a stew in any real sense. The beef is done when it is hot through; longer only toughens it.
- NutmegGrate it fresh and use a modest amount. Pre-ground nutmeg loses its aromatics on keeping and tempts you to use more, which quickly overwhelms the sauce.
- YieldFive or six as the book has it, from two pounds of beef. Four generous modern portions is closer to the mark.
Reheated joints were a standing problem in the Victorian kitchen, where large roasts were the norm and refrigeration was not, and cookery books devoted whole chapters to what they called rechauffes or "warmed-over" dishes. Labelling this one a la Francaise signals the French method of the thing: a proper brown roux, a stock-based sauce, and the option of finishing with a liaison of egg and acid rather than more flour, a technique long used in European cookery and carried into the classical repertoire. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, compiled for middle-class households, sits in that tradition of dressing up economy with French terminology, and the egg-and-lemon variant here is essentially the same finish used in fricassees and blanquettes.