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Beef, Ragout Of
Take one and a half pounds of top side of round of beef, cut into pieces about one and a half inches square, and roll in seasoned flour. Fry in two ounces of dripping or butter until a nice brown, and remove on to a plate. Slice an onion and a carrot, and fry them, stirring in a tea-spoonful of flour. When of a nut brown colour stir this thickening into one pint of good stock; boil in a stewpan, and when boiling add the meat, and simmer one hour gently. Break four ounces spaghetti or macaroni into pieces, and boil in salted water fifteen minutes. Strain, and make a border of it on a hot dish, and pour the ragout into the centre. Garnish with pickled walnuts cut into quarters. Probable cost, 2s.
A straightforward brown stew, but the timings and the garnish both need attention before it works on a modern stove.
- The cut"Top side of round" is topside, the lean outer muscle of the hind leg, sold in the US as top round. At 1½ lb cut in 1½-inch cubes it feeds three or four with the pasta border.
- One hour is not enoughTopside is lean and stays firm at a short simmer; an hour is likely to leave the meat dry. Give it two to two and a half hours at a bare simmer, keeping the pan covered and topping up with stock if the level drops.
- DrippingBeef dripping is the rendered fat from a roast. Any beef fat, lard or clarified butter browns the flour coating just as well; whole butter will scorch at the heat you need for a good crust.
- Brown the flour properlyThe teaspoon of flour stirred into the frying onion and carrot is the thickener, and "nut brown" is the whole point of it. Take it past pale straw or the sauce tastes raw and pasty.
- Stock"Good stock" here would have meant homemade beef or veal stock. A pint is 20 fl oz in this British book, roughly 2⅓ to 2½ US cups; commercial broth is salty, so hold back on seasoning the flour and taste at the end.
- The pastaFifteen minutes suits the thick dried macaroni of the period. Modern spaghetti wants 8 to 10 minutes and should go into the water only once the meat is nearly done, since a pasta border collapses into starch if it sits.
- Pickled walnutsStill made in Britain, sold in jars, black and vinegary. They are not decorative filler but the sharp note that cuts the flour-thickened gravy; capers or cornichons stand in acceptably.
- Probable costTwo shillings. It is a costing note, not an instruction.
Ragoût comes from the French ragoûter, to revive the taste or appetite, and by the late nineteenth century the word had been thoroughly absorbed into English cookery to mean any small-cut brown stew. The method is the standard one -- flour the meat, brown it, brown the vegetables and flour together, moisten with stock -- and can be applied to any cheap joint. What dates the dish is the presentation: a piped or heaped border of macaroni with the meat spooned into the well was common Victorian and Edwardian service, the same instinct that produced rice borders and duchesse potato walls. Pasta at this period was treated largely as an English kitchen staple sold by the pound in long dried sticks rather than as an Italian dish in its own right, which is why the recipe can offer spaghetti and macaroni as interchangeable and boil either for a quarter of an hour without comment.