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Caretaker's Beef
The real name of this dish is Miroton de la Concierge, and it is currently held that only concierges can do it to perfection. Put a handful of minced onion to fry in butter; when it is nearly coked, but not quite, add a dessert-spoonful of flour, and stir it till all is well colored. Pour on it a little gravy, or meat-juice of some kind, and let it simmer for ten minutes after it begins to steam again. Then take your beef, which must be cold, and cut in small slices; throw them in and let it all cook for a quarter of an hour, only simmering, and constantly stirring it, so that though it becomes considerably reduced it does not stick to the pan.
A leftover-beef dish built on a small brown roux, written for a cook who already had stock and cold boiled beef on hand. The whole thing works or fails on the onion stage.
- The hinge: the onion"Nearly coked, but not quite" is a typo for cooked, and it means the onions should be soft and just turning gold, not browned. They finish colouring with the flour, and onions already dark at that point will turn bitter over the next twenty-five minutes of simmering.
- QuantitiesThe recipe gives none beyond "a handful" of onion and a dessert-spoonful of flour; a dessertspoon is conventionally two teaspoons. A handful might be one medium onion. Note that the text asks only for "a little gravy," so add liquid sparingly and judge the thickness as you go.
- "Gravy, or meat-juice of some kind"In a 1915 kitchen this was the strained pan juices or the pot liquor from a boiled joint. Good beef stock works; if you use a canned broth, reduce it first or the sauce stays thin and salty.
- Cook the flour properlyStir the flour into the butter and onion for a few minutes before any liquid goes in. "Till all is well colored" means letting the flour take on some brown, which is what gives the dish its savour rather than a pasty taste.
- Keep it below a boilBoth simmers, the ten minutes and the quarter hour, must stay at a bare tremble. The beef is already cooked; a real boil squeezes it dry and stringy, and the thin sauce will catch on the pan bottom, which is exactly what the constant stirring is meant to prevent.
- Slice against the grainCold beef cut thin and across the grain will stay tender through fifteen minutes in the sauce. Thick chunks of previously boiled or roasted meat go leathery.
- Seasoning the book leaves outNo salt, pepper or acid is specified. Taste at the end. Some versions of miroton are sharpened with a little vinegar or mustard to cut the richness.
- ServingThe recipe says it becomes considerably reduced, so expect a thick sauce that needs starch under it: boiled potatoes, mash, or bread. Serve at once.
Miroton is an old French kitchen word for cold cooked meat reheated in an onion sauce; the standard bourgeois version is beef from the stockpot layered with onions and moistened with gravy. Calling it Miroton de la Concierge reads as a joke about thrift: the concierge was the caretaker who kept the door of an apartment house, and the recipe's own claim that only concierges can do it to perfection is made half-seriously. The Belgian Cook Book was assembled during the First World War, when Belgium was occupied and its food supply depended on relief shipments, and it was published in aid of Belgian refugees. Recipes that turn a scrap of cold meat and one onion into a dinner were the point of the book, not a curiosity in it.