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German Onion Beef
Put four or five pounds of the thin end of the flank of beef into a stewpan, with sufficient water to cover it, one dessert-spoonful of salt and a little muslin bag containing one dozen bruised cloves, two dozen peppercorns, one bay-leaf, and the thin rind of a large lemon. Simmer gently for forty minutes. Add eight large onions, cut into slices, and simmer again till they are tender. Remove the scum carefully as it rises. Take out the muslin bag, and thicken the gravy with one table-spoonful of flour, mixed with two of cold water. Serve the meat in the same dish, which should be made hot, together with the onions, etc. Time, an hour and a quarter. Probable cost, beef, 9d. per pound. Sufficient for six or eight persons.
A plain boiled-beef dish that depends almost entirely on getting the simmering time right — and the time given in the original is the one thing not to trust.
- The stated time is far too shortThe stated time looks short -- an hour and a quarter is unlikely to soften four or five pounds of flank; a bare simmer of two to three hours or more is usually needed before the collagen turns to gelatine. Cook until a fork slides in with no resistance, then add the onions for the last 40 minutes or so.
- The cut"Thin end of the flank" is the belly end of the animal, sold today as thin flank or boiling beef. Brisket or a boned short rib behaves much the same way and is easier to find in a 4–5 lb piece.
- MeasuresA dessert-spoonful is 2 teaspoons — modest salt for this much meat and liquid, so taste and correct the broth before thickening.
- The muslin bagA square of cheesecloth tied with string, or a stainless tea ball. Pare the lemon rind with a peeler so no white pith goes in; pith turns the broth bitter over a long simmer.
- SkimmingThe grey scum in the first fifteen minutes is coagulated protein and should come off; keep the pot at a shiver rather than a boil, or the scum emulsifies back in and the broth clouds.
- The thickeningOne tablespoon of flour in two of water will barely register in several pints of cooking liquid. Ladle out the amount of gravy you actually want to serve, thicken that, or simply reduce the strained broth hard and skim the fat.
- Yield and servingSix to eight, as stated. Carve across the grain and spoon the onions and gravy over; boiled potatoes suit it.
- Cost note"9d. per pound" is the Victorian retail price the book quotes for the cut.
Cassell's assembles its "national" recipes loosely, and this one earns its German label mainly through the onions and the clove-and-bay aromatics that flavour the boiled-beef dishes of central Europe — the family that includes Austrian Tafelspitz and the various Rindfleisch mit Zwiebeln of German home cooking, where a cheap cut is simmered whole and served in its own broth. A spice bag of cloves, peppercorns, bay and lemon peel is a common device in cookery books of the period for perfuming a large pot without leaving debris in the dish. Flank sat below the prime roasting joints in price, and its use here fits the book's interest in making tough, well-worked muscle palatable to a household feeding eight, for which a long moist simmer is the obvious technique.