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Beef Vinaigrette
Cut a slice of about three inches in thickness from a round of boiled fresh beef, put in a saucepan and pour over it a wineglassful of white wine and a little water, add a bay leaf, a small bunch of sweet herbs, two or three cloves and salt and pepper to taste. Place the saucepan over the fire and cook until the liquor is about half absorbed, turning the meat frequently. Place on a dish when cold, and serve with a sauceboat of the liquor strained and a little vinegar mixed with it.
This is a leftovers dish dressed up in French clothing: cold boiled beef finished in wine and aromatics, then served with its own reduced liquor sharpened with vinegar. The hinge is that the beef is already cooked, so everything here is about flavoring and reduction, not tenderizing.
- "Vinaigrette" is not a dressing"Vinaigrette" here is not a dressing -- Whatever oil-and-vinegar sauces went by the name elsewhere, in this recipe the vinaigrette is simply the strained cooking liquor pointed up with vinegar in the sauceboat: no oil, no mustard, no whisking.
- "Boiled fresh beef"Fresh here means unsalted, as opposed to corned or pickled beef. This is the plain simmered beef of a pot-au-feu or a boiled dinner, so the recipe assumes you already have a cooked round sitting in the icebox.
- A wineglassfulReckon about 2 fl oz, roughly a quarter cup, for a dry white. The recipe adds only "a little water" alongside, so the meat is not covered.
- Three inches is a slab, not a portionThe recipe has you dish the meat when cold, so it is meant to be sliced up rather than served as a single piece; a 3-inch slice from a round will stretch to several cold servings.
- Sweet herbsThe standard bunch of the era: parsley stems, thyme, and marjoram or savory, tied with string so it lifts out.
- "Over the fire" means low"Over the fire" is best read as low -- A bare simmer, turning the meat often so both faces take up the wine. Cook only until the liquor is about half gone, as the recipe says; a hard boil will squeeze already-cooked beef dry.
- Vinegar by taste, added lateThe recipe mixes the vinegar into the strained liquor at the sauceboat, not in the pan. Start with a teaspoon of wine vinegar per half cup of liquor and go up from there.
- ServingThe recipe gives no accompaniments; boiled potatoes, cornichons or pickled beets and good bread would suit a cold sliced beef with the sauce passed separately.
Boiled beef served cold with a vinegar sauce was a fixture of nineteenth-century French bourgeois cooking, where the meat left from the stockpot was rarely thrown out; boeuf bouilli à la vinaigrette and the related boeuf à la parisienne turn up in household manuals of the period. Oscar Tschirky, maître d'hôtel of the Waldorf and later the Waldorf-Astoria, published his cook book in 1896. The technique of reheating cooked beef in a little wine with a bouquet and cloves is what separates the dish from a plain cold cut: the meat takes up a second, sharper seasoning as the liquid reduces, and the same reduced liquor becomes the sauce.