Beef a La Mode
Cross Rib of Beef Pepper Corns cover; remove scum. When nearly done, add other ingredients. Stew until meat is very tender. Stir the barley flour with a little water and thicken the 2 Onions whole; boil up and serve. 1 Carrot
The page has come down to us badly scrambled — the ingredient column and the method have been interleaved, so the list (cross rib, peppercorns, two whole onions, one carrot, barley flour) has been broken up mid-sentence. Read it as a plain braise and the intent is clear enough, though quantities, liquid and times are simply absent.
- Reconstructing the textThe sense runs: put the cross rib and peppercorns in a pot with water, cover, bring up and remove the scum; when the meat is nearly done add the whole onions and the carrot; stew until very tender; stir the barley flour with a little water, stir it in, boil up and serve. The stray fragments are entries from the ingredient list that have been interleaved with the method, not steps.
- Cross ribA shoulder cut, sold in the US as chuck cross rib roast and lying close to the shoulder clod; UK butchers' names for the area vary. It is a working muscle full of connective tissue and suits a long wet braise.
- No liquid is statedThe reference to removing scum means the meat starts in water or stock, brought slowly to a bare simmer. Traditional à la mode versions use part red wine. The original gives no quantity, so judge it: liquid roughly halfway up the meat for a covered pot.
- TimeA 3-4 lb cross rib needs roughly 3 to 3½ hours at a bare simmer, or the same covered in a 300F oven. "Very tender" means a fork turns in the meat without resistance. The vegetables going in "when nearly done" want the last 45 minutes or so, or whole onions and a whole carrot will collapse.
- Barley flourStill sold, usually in health food shops, and it thickens more softly and cloudily than wheat. Slake it in cold water to a thin cream before it goes near the pot, and give it a genuine boil — barley starch tastes raw and pasty if it is only warmed through. Plain flour or a beurre manié substitutes without complaint.
- PeppercornsWhole, and they stay whole. If you would rather not bite one at table, tie them in a scrap of muslin with the onion and lift the bag out before thickening.
- SkimmingThe scum is coagulated protein and rises in the first ten minutes as the water heats. Take it off before the pot reaches a rolling boil, or it breaks up and clouds the gravy — the whole reason the instruction is the first one given.
- YieldNo amount of beef is specified. A 3-4 lb cross rib serves six to eight, and the dish is better on the second day, sliced cold or reheated in its own gravy.
Beef rendering of French b uf mode, a large piece of beef braised whole with root vegetables han than "beify in the fashion," a phrase that is attested in English cookery books from the early eighteenth century and stayed. In France the beef is usually larded with strips of pork fat and the braise finished with a calf's foot so the liquor sets to jelly; the plainer Anglo-American version, as here, drops the larding and thickens the gravy with flour instead. What is on the page is the cheap shoulder cut, one carrot, two onions and a spoonful of flour, a Sunday roast built out of the pot rather than the oven. The use of barley flour rather than wheat is a small period marker, now largely forgotten outside of Scottish and Northern English kitchens.