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BEEF.
A ROAST sirloin of beef is called Aloyau à la broche. For Aloyau de bœuf à la Provençale the sirloin is larded and spread with a stuffing of marrow, anchovies, garlic, etc.; roasted, and served with Piquante sauce.
The upper part of the sirloin, boned and rolled, is served as- Aloyau en cannelon-roasted; sauce raifort, with horseradish sauce. braisé à la royale-larded and braised. à la Printanière-braised, and served with young vegetables. à la Portugaise-larded and braised; served with stewed Portugal onions and brown sauce. à la Godard-braised, and served with slices of sweetbread, mushrooms, etc.
The fillet, or undercut of the sirloin, is usually cut out and dressed as a separate dish.
A single page on roast beef, and it is really about butchery. The French names are a thin covering over a set of decisions about how the sirloin gets cut up.
- AloyauThe word covers the sirloin on the bone, and à la broche means on the spit, turning in front of an open fire. That is not a flourish but a description: the joint cooked in its own radiant heat and was basted with its own dripping, and an oven gives a different result because the heat comes from every side at once.
- The undercutThe page says the fillet is usually cut out of the sirloin and dressed as a separate dish, and that one sentence is the origin of the modern meat counter. Once the undercut is removed and sold on its own you have fillet steak at one price and sirloin at another, and the whole joint this page starts from very nearly disappears.
- Boned and rolledThe upper part of the sirloin boned and tied into a cylinder is still a cut any butcher will prepare if asked; it is just not sitting out ready in the case. Ask for the bones as well, because every sauce on this page starts in the stockpot.
- Anchovy with beefThe Provençale stuffing of marrow, anchovies and garlic is not a fish flavour. Anchovy was this period’s deep savoury seasoning, used much the way soy or fish sauce is used now, and it dissolves into the meat and leaves no trace of itself.
- MarrowBeef marrow appears here as a stuffing and elsewhere in the book spread on toast. Marrow bones are cheap again and sold split; the marrow comes out with a spoon after roasting and melts into a sauce without any further work.
- Larding a jointEven a sirloin is larded before it goes near the fire. Beef of the period was generally leaner than what is sold now, and the fat was put in because it was not already there, which is why larding a well-marbled modern sirloin achieves nothing at all.
This joint was not carved in the kitchen. A sirloin came to the table whole and the host or hostess took it apart in front of everybody, which is why a separate book on carving existed at all and why its opening chapter is about how guests should behave while it happens. The French on this page is doing something slightly different from elsewhere in the book: roast beef needed no dressing up to be impressive in an English dining room, so Aloyau à la broche is less a disguise than a translation, putting the most English thing on the table into the language the card happened to be written in. Everything after it — larded, braised, glazed, served with young vegetables or stewed onions or slices of sweetbread — is the French kitchen’s treatment applied to it afterwards.