France Bendtsen
Fince Band say
CANNELON OF BEEF
2 pounds lean beef cut from round Grated rind ½ lemon 1 tablespoon finely chopped 1 egg parsley 1/2 teaspoon onion juice 2 tablespoons melted butter Few gratings nutmeg 1 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon pepper Chop meat finely, and add remaining ingredients in order given. Shape in a roll six inches long, place on rack in dripping pan, and arrange over top slices of fat salt pork and bake thirty minutes. Baste every five minutes with one-quarter cup butter melted in one cup boiling water. Serve with brown mushroom sauce.
A shaped meat roll of the type Fannie Farmer popularized, given here without an oven temperature — the one thing the recipe most needs. Everything else is straightforward.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. Thirty minutes for a two-pound roll implies a fairly hot oven, in the region of 400-425F; at a moderate 350F expect to need longer, perhaps 45-50 minutes.
- "Chop meat finely"This means what we now buy as ground beef. Ask for round ground once, or grind it yourself; lean round is correct here, since the fat comes from the salt pork on top and the butter baste.
- DonenessGround beef should reach 160F at the center. In a roll six inches long and roughly three thick, check with an instant-read thermometer rather than trusting the clock.
- Onion juiceA common period shortcut: grate an onion and press the pulp through a sieve, or grate on a microplane and use the liquid. Half a teaspoon of grated onion works as a substitute.
- Fat salt porkThin slices of salt pork laid over the top are barding — they melt and keep the lean surface from drying. Unsmoked pork belly or fatty pancetta will do; bacon adds smoke the recipe does not intend. Rinse salt pork if it is heavily cured.
- The basteA quarter cup of butter in a cup of boiling water gives a thin, hot emulsion that steams the surface as much as it enriches it. Basting every five minutes is the point of the dish; skip it and you get a dry meatloaf.
- Rack and panA wire rack set in a shallow roasting pan lets the drippings and baste collect below rather than frying the underside. The pan juices are worth adding to the mushroom sauce.
- YieldTwo pounds of meat serves four to six. Let the roll rest five minutes before slicing or it will crumble.
"Cannelon" comes from the French cannelon, a roll or tube, related to cannelloni, and by the late nineteenth century American cookbooks used it for forcemeat shaped into a cylinder and roasted. A nearly identical Cannelon of Beef appears in Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, and this version follows it very closely — a reminder that in books printing dishes over a contributor's name, the contributor supplied a dish they liked rather than one they had invented. Lemon rind, nutmeg and parsley in ground beef mark the recipe as a descendant of the older English seasoned forcemeat tradition, before ketchup and onion soup mix took over the American meatloaf.