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Beef, Fricandeau of
INGREDIENTS for dish for 6 persons. -About 3 lbs. of the inside fillet of the sirloin (a piece of the rump may be substituted for this), pepper and salt to taste, 3 cloves, 2 blades of mace, 3 whole allspice, 1 pint of stock (see STOCK), or water, 1 glass of sherry, 1 bunch of savoury herbs, 2 shalots, bacon. AVERAGE COST, 4s. 6d.
Cut some bacon into thin strips, and sprinkle over them a seasoning of pepper and salt, mixed with cloves, mace, and allspice, well pounded. Lard the beef with these, put it into a stewpan with the stock or water, sherry, herbs, shalots, 2 cloves, and more pepper and salt. Stew the meat gently until tender, when take it out, cover it closely, skim off all the fat from the gravy, and strain it. Set it on the fire, and boil till it becomes a glaze.
Glaze the larded side of the beef with this, BEEF FRITTERS. and serve on sorrel sauce, which is made as follows:-Wash and pick some sorrel, and put it into a stewpan with only the water that hangs about it. Keep stirring, to prevent its burning, and when done, lay it in a sieve to drain. Chop it, and stew it with a small piece of butter and 4 or 5 tablespoonfuls of good gravy, for an hour, then rub it through a sieve. If too acid, add sugar; a little cabbage-lettuce boiled with the sorrel will be found an improvement.
TIME.-2 hours to gently stew the meat.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Beef, Fried Salt. (Cold Meat Cookery.)-INGREDIENTS. - A few slices of cold salt beef, pepper to taste, 3 oz. of butter, mashed potatoes. AVERAGE COST, exclusive of the meat, 4d.
Cut any part of cold salt beef into thin slices, fry them gently in butter, and season with a little pepper. Have ready some very hot mashed potatoes, lay the slices of beef on them, and garnish with 3 or 4 pickled gherkins. Cold salt beef, warmed in a little liquor from mixed pickle, drained, and served as above, will be found good.
TIME.-About 5 minutes.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Beef Fritters. (Cold Meat Cookery.) INGREDIENTS. - The remains of cold roast beef, pepper and salt to taste, 3/4 lb. of flour, pint of water, 2 oz. of butter, the whites of 2 eggs. AVERAGE COST, exclusive of the meat, 6d.
Mix very smoothly, and by degrees, the flour with the above proportion of water; stir in 2 oz. of butter, which must be melted but not oiled, and just before it is to be used, add the whites of two wellwhisked eggs. Should the batter be too thick, more water must be added. Pare down the cold beef into thin shreds, season with pepper and salt, and mix it with the batter, or the beef may be cut in thin slices and dipped in the batter. Drop a small quantity at a time into a pan of boiling lard, and fry from 7 to 10 minutes, according to the size. When done on one side, turn and brown them on the other. Let them dry for a minute or two before the fire, and serve on a folded napkin. A small quantity of finely-minced onions, mixed with the batter, is thought by some to be an improvement.
TIME. From 7 to 10 minutes.
SEASONABLE at any time.
BEEF, HASHED.
Beef, Hashed. I. (Cold Meat Cookery.)-INGREDIENTS for small dish. - Gravy saved from the meat, 1 teaspoonful of tomato sauce, one teaspoonful of Harvey's sauce, one teaspoonful of good mushroom ketchup, 1/21 a glass of port wine or strong ale, pepper and salt to taste, a little flour to thicken, 1 onion finely minced, a few slices of cold roast beef. AVERAGE COST, exclusive of the meat, 4d.
Put all the ingredients but the beef into a stewpan with whatever gravy may have been saved from the meat the day it was roasted; simmer these gently for 10 minutes, then take the stewpan off the fire; let the gravy cool and skim off the fat.
Cut the beef into thin slices, dredge them with flour, and lay them in the gravy; let the whole simmer gently for 5 minutes, but not boil, or the meat will be tough and hard. Serve very hot, and garnish with sippets of toasted bread.
TIME.-20 minutes.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Beef, Hashed. II. (Cold Meat Cookery.)-INGREDIENTS for small dish.- The remains of ribs or sirloin of beef, 2 onions, 1 carrot, 1 bunch of herbs, pepper and salt to taste, 1/2 blade of pounded mace, thickening of flour, rather more than 1 pint of water. AVERAGE COST, exclusive of the meat, 6d.
Take off all the meat from the bones of ribs or sirloin of beef; remove the outside brown and gristle; place the meat on one side, and well stew the bones and pieces with the above ingredients, for about 2 hours, it becomes a strong gravy, and is reduced to rather more than 1/2 pint strain this, thicken with a teaspoonful of flour, and let the gravy cool; skim off all the fat; lay in the meat, let it get hot through, but do not allow it to boil; and garnish with sippets of toasted bread.
The gravy should be flavoured as in the preceding recipe.
TIME. Rather more than 2 hours.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Note.-Either of the above recipes may be served in walls of mashed potatoes, browned; in which case the sippets should be omitted.
Be careful that hashed meat does not boil, or it will become tough.
A larded, braised joint finished with its own reduced cooking liquor and set on a purée of sorrel. Two things decide whether it works: the cut you choose and how far you reduce the gravy.
- Choose the rump, not the filletThe "inside fillet of the sirloin" is the beef tenderloin, which has almost no connective tissue and turns dry and grainy after two hours of stewing. The rump offered as a substitute is the better choice here, as is top rump (thick flank) or a piece of silverside; 3 lb serves six generously.
- LardingLarding means threading strips of fat through the meat with a larding needle, not laying bacon on top. A thin-bladed larding needle or a sharpened chopstick to open channels will do; use unsmoked fat back or streaky bacon cut into pencil-thick lardons, rolled in the pounded spice and salt.
- Blades and whole spicesA blade of mace is one piece of the dried aril of nutmeg; roughly a quarter teaspoon of ground mace stands in for two blades. Allspice here means whole berries. Pound the cloves, mace and allspice with the salt and pepper before rolling the lardons in it, or the spice will not adhere.
- ShalotsShalots are shallots; two will do, and a large modern shallot can stand in.
- The braiseOne pint is a British pint, 20 fl oz or 570 ml, which will not cover a 3 lb joint. That is intended: this is a braise, not a boil. Keep the pan tightly lidded at a bare tremble, around 300F if you move it to the oven, and turn the joint once.
- Reducing to a glazeSkim and strain the liquor, then boil it hard until it coats the back of a spoon and pulls into thick threads off the spoon's edge. From roughly a pint of liquid you will finish with two or three tablespoons. Brush it on the larded side while both meat and glaze are hot; it sets to a lacquer as it cools and will not spread once it does.
- Sorrel sauceSorrel collapses to nothing, so start with a very large amount of leaves, at least a pound for six. An hour of stewing is longer than the sauce needs once the leaves are chopped; twenty to thirty minutes with the butter and gravy is enough to soften the raw edge. Cook it in stainless steel or enamel, never bare cast iron or aluminium, which the acid will react with and discolour.
- Balancing the acidThe instruction to add sugar or a little boiled cabbage-lettuce is the point of the sauce. Taste after sieving; sorrel varies wildly in sharpness through the season, and early spring leaves need less correction than late ones.
- ServingServe the sauce beneath the joint as directed rather than over it, so the glaze stays glossy. Carve across the grain in thick slices, which shows the pattern of the lardons.
The fricandeau came into English cookery from French practice, where it properly means a thick piece of veal from the cushion of the leg, larded, braised and glazed, and traditionally served on sorrel pur on's book, like most Victorian English collections, borrowed the treatment and applied it to beef, which was cheaper and far more familiar in the middle-class household she wrote for. The larding is the historically informative part: British beef of the period was often lean, grass-fed and slaughtered older than we are used to, and threading seasoned fat through a joint before a long braise was an ordinary insurance against dryness rather than a flourish. Sorrel, now an unusual buy, was then a common garden and hedgerow green, and its sharpness played the role that lemon or mustard plays for us against a rich, glazed piece of meat. The costing of 4s. 6d. sits at the upper end of the book's dishes, marking this as company food.