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Beef, Marinade
A pickle should be made on the day previous to the marinade being required, that the meat may lie in it the full time necessary. Extract, by stewing, all the flavour from the following ingredients, with a half pint each of vinegar and water;--One clove of garlic, some sliced carrots and onions, a few peppercorns, and a little salt. Strain, and let it become cold. Cut into slices one pound of beef from the inside of a sirloin, and lay them in the pickle for twenty-four hours. Have ready a little nice brown gravy, and simmer the slices in it till they are quite tender. Blend together a little butter and flour, add this to the gravy, with a glass of port wine, two dessert-spoonful of shallot vinegar. Serve with the sauce poured over the meat. Time to simmer, three-quarters of an hour. Probable cost, without meat, 1s. Sufficient for three persons.
A two-day dish: an aromatic vinegar pickle on day one, a braise in brown gravy on day two. Nothing here is difficult, but two details need translating and one instruction is worth arguing with.
- Refrigerate the pickleThe original assumes a cold larder for the twenty-four hour soak. Do it in the fridge, in a non-reactive bowl or a zip bag, and make sure the boiled pickle is fully cold before the meat goes in.
- Half a pint eachImperial half-pints, so 10 fl oz of vinegar and 10 fl oz of water, about 1¼ US cups each. That is enough to cover a pound of sliced beef in a snug dish.
- "Inside of a sirloin"The undercut of the sirloin, which is the fillet or tenderloin. A butcher will know it as such; failing that, use trimmed tenderloin or the eye of a well-hung sirloin steak, cut across into slices about half an inch thick.
- The forty-five minutesThree-quarters of an hour of simmering will take tenderloin well past grey. The instruction makes sense for tougher slices from an older animal, which is what Victorian beef often was. With modern tender beef, simmer only until heated through and just yielding, then lift the meat out and finish the sauce separately.
- Brown gravyNot a packet product. What is meant is a reduced brown stock or a light espagnole: beef stock cooked down with browned mirepoix and thickened. The original gives no quantity, only "a little".
- A glass of portA wineglass in Victorian measure is around 2 fl oz, not a modern pour. Add it with the beurre manie and let it simmer a few minutes to take the raw edge off the wine; a short simmer will not drive off all of the alcohol.
- Shallot vinegarNow easiest to make by steeping a couple of finely chopped shallots in white wine vinegar for a week. Two dessertspoons is roughly two teaspoons short of two tablespoons, and the original adds it to the gravy along with the port and the butter-and-flour.
- Yield and costThree portions, as stated. The "1s." is the cost of everything but the beef, a reminder that the book was written for households budgeting to the penny.
Marinade comes through French from mariner, to steep in brine, and originally meant exactly that: seawater or salted vinegar used to keep and to tenderise. By the time Cassell's was compiled in the late nineteenth century the word had shifted in English kitchens to mean an acidulated, aromatised bath used chiefly for flavour, though the older tenderising purpose still shows in the instruction to simmer the slices "till they are quite tender" — beef then was frequently from working animals and hung hard. The entry sits in the dictionary's run of beef preparations aimed at using up or improving a modest pound of meat, and the finish of port, butter-and-flour liaison and shallot vinegar is the standard Anglo-French sauce grammar of the period: a brown base, a fortified wine for depth, an acid at the last moment to lift it.