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BEEF, SIRLOIN (a la Godard)
Remove the bones from about six pounds of sirloin, and pare neatly. Cut a quarter of a pound of bacon into strips about one and a half inches long. Make some holes in the meat with a wooden skewer, and insert the strips of bacon. Roll and tie firmly. Put into a braising pan one sliced onion, one sliced carrot, and a bouquet of herbs (see BOUQUET GARNI), moisten with a gill of sherry and a pint of stock, season with pepper and salt, and braise for two hours in a moderately hot oven. Skim off the fat, add half a pint of tomato sauce and one gill of brown sauce, previously warmed, and cook for another three-quarters of an hour. Take up the meat and keep hot, free the sauce from fat, and strain; boil for another ten minutes. Add the garnishing, consisting of mushroom-heads, quartered artichoke bottoms, slices of truffles, and quenelles. When these have got thoroughly hot, untie the loin of beef, dish up on a bed of mashed potatoes, and surround with the garnishing. Pour some of the sauce over the meat, and serve the remainder in a sauce-boat. Probable cost, 8s. 6d.
A late-Victorian braised sirloin dressed in the full à la Godard manner. The cooking itself is straightforward; the garnish is where the work sits, and most of it can be prepared while the beef braises.
- A gillA quarter of a pint, 5 imperial fl oz (roughly half a US cup plus a tablespoon). The recipe calls for a gill of sherry and later a gill of brown sauce.
- Oven heat"Moderately hot" is usually read today as somewhere around 375F, though the book gives no temperatures. For a braise this size, 325-350F is better: the liquid should barely tremble, not boil, or the outer inch of the joint dries and shreds.
- Cut and weightSix pounds of boned sirloin is a large, expensive roll of meat. A boned and rolled sirloin, or the flat-cut end of a rib, both work; a chuck or top blade roll of the same weight braises more forgivingly and at a fraction of the cost.
- The lardingPiercing with a skewer and threading in bacon strips is larding without a larding needle, and it matters here because sirloin has little internal fat and two and three-quarter hours of braising will render it dry otherwise. Cut the strips no thicker than a pencil and push them in along the grain.
- Braising liquidA pint of stock plus a gill of sherry will not cover a six-pound joint, and is not meant to. Use a lidded pan just big enough to hold the meat, and turn the joint once halfway through so both sides sit in the liquid.
- Artichoke bottoms and trufflesArtichoke bottoms are the trimmed, hollowed bases of large globe artichokes; tinned or frozen ones are sold and are widely used. Truffle slices are optional garnish rather than structural; leave them out rather than substitute truffle oil.
- QuenellesSmall poached forcemeat dumplings, usually veal or chicken pounded with panada and cream. They are added only to heat through at the end, so poach them separately beforehand and keep them warm.
- Total time and yieldTwo hours of braising plus three-quarters of an hour with the sauce, then ten minutes reducing the strained sauce: allow three and a half hours from the oven going on. Six pounds of boned beef serves ten to twelve with the garnish and mashed potato.
- RestingThe instruction to "take up the meat and keep hot" while the sauce finishes is doing double duty as a rest. Keep it loosely covered somewhere warm and slice only once the sauce is strained and reduced.
À la Godard is one of the codified garnishes of nineteenth-century French service, usually built around mushroom caps, artichoke bottoms, truffle and quenelles served with a rich brown sauce, though authorities differ and some versions take in cockscombs, kidneys or sweetbreads; it was applied to large braised joints and poultry alike. The name is generally traced to a French gourmet or financier of the early 1800s rather than to any cook, though the attribution is traditional rather than documented; what is certain is that by the time Cassell's appeared the term functioned as shorthand, and a professional cook reading "à la Godard" knew which garnishes to assemble. Its presence in an English household dictionary shows how thoroughly the vocabulary of the French répertoire had reached the ambitious middle-class kitchen, along with the assumption that a cook could turn out quenelles and prepare artichoke bottoms as a matter of course. The "probable cost, 8s. 6d." is the giveaway that this was a dish for a household with a cook and a dinner to give.