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Fricandeau of Beef
Select a good piece of beef, lard it well with bacon seasoned with pepper, powdered cloves, mace and allspice. Place in a stewpan with a pint of broth or beefgravy, a wineglassful of sherry and a bundle of parsley and sweet herbs, a clove of garlic and a shallot or two. When tender cover the meat closely, skim the sauce and strain it and boil until reduced to a glaze. Then mask the larded side with the glaze and serve with tomato sauce.
A braise disguised as a roast: the whole point is the larding, and the whole payoff is the glaze. Oscar assumes you can lard a joint and know when beef is tender, so almost nothing here is timed.
- The hinge: lard, then braise lowFricandeau is defined by the strips of seasoned bacon or salt pork threaded through a lean cut with a larding needle, which were understood to baste it from within during the long, slow cook. Without them a lean piece of beef in a pint of liquid risks going dry and stringy.
- Which cut"A good piece of beef" for a fricandeau points to a solid, lean, evenly shaped joint that will slice cleanly: top round, eye of round or a thick piece of rump. The recipe gives no weight; 3 to 4 lb is a modern working figure. If larding is not practical, a chuck or brisket braises well but will not carve into the neat rosy slices this dish is after.
- MeasuresA pint is 2 cups of broth; a wineglassful in American cookbooks of this period is about 2 fl oz, or a scant quarter cup. The "bundle of parsley and sweet herbs" is a bouquet garni: parsley stems, thyme, a bay leaf, tied.
- Heat and timeThe recipe is stovetop: bring the stewpan to a bare simmer, then cover and hold it there. A low oven, around 325F, is a modern equivalent and not something the recipe specifies. A 3 to 4 lb round wants roughly 2.5 to 3.5 hours; tender means a skewer slides out without resistance, not that the meat is falling apart.
- "Cover the meat closely"The sequence as printed reads oddly, and the instruction most likely belongs to the braise rather than after it. Cover during the braise, then lift the meat out and keep it warm while you skim, strain and reduce; a lid over the finished joint keeps it from drying while the sauce comes down.
- Reducing to a glazeTwo cups of braising liquid will reduce to a few tablespoons of syrupy glaze, and it will catch and burn in the last minute if unwatched. Reduce over moderate heat, stirring toward the end, and stop while it still pours off the spoon.
- MaskingTo mask is to brush or spoon the glaze over the larded surface in thin coats, letting each set and glossing the joint. Better to serve the tomato sauce around or under the slices than poured over the glazed top.
- YieldA 3 to 4 lb joint serves six to eight, sliced across the grain. It carves better after 15 minutes' rest.
The name comes from the French fricandeau, which properly meant a larded and braised cushion of veal, glazed with its own reduced cooking liquor and served with sorrel or a light sauce. Oscar Tschirky's version transposes the technique to beef and finishes it with tomato sauce. The heavy seasoning of the lardons with cloves, mace and allspice is older than the hotel dining room; it belongs to an English and colonial tradition of spicing potted and larded meats that survived in cookbooks well into the nineteenth century. Larding needles were ordinary kitchen equipment when this was written and are now a specialist purchase, which may be one reason the dish, once a staple of the professional larder, has largely disappeared from home cooking.