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Grenadines of Beef
Cut up a sufficient quantity of the undercut of the rump of beef into cutlets a third of an inch thick, lard them with thin strips of bacon, and place in a saucepan with a small piece of butter, lightly sprinkling the upper side with pepper and salt. Cook very slowly for fifteen minutes, without approaching frying, and then turn on the other side and pepper and salt the upper, cooking for fifteen minutes longer. Have in readiness half a pint of good brown gravy thickened with a little flour, coat the grenadines with this, place on the dish for serving, pour the gravy over and garnish with sprigs of cauliflower, Brussels sprouts.
A short braise-in-butter method for small larded beef cutlets, finished with brown sauce. The instruction that governs the dish is the one that sounds like a mistake: the meat is deliberately never allowed to sizzle.
- What a grenadine isIn Escoffier-era usage a grenadin is a small, thick medallion of meat, larded on top, cooked gently rather than grilled. It is in effect a small-scale version of the larger larded fricandeau of veal; the origin of the word itself is uncertain, and the culinary term is unrelated to the sweetened pomegranate syrup sold under a similar name.
- The cut"Undercut of the rump" points to the tender inner muscle running under the rump end. The nearest modern equivalents are tenderloin or a well-trimmed top sirloin; slice across the grain.
- "Without approaching frying"This is the hinge. The butter must stay below the point of audible sizzling, so the cutlets sweat and stay pale rather than browning. Colour and flavour come from the brown gravy, not from a sear.
- Thirty minutes on a third-inch cutletHalf an hour will take a slice this thin far past well done. It works only because the heat is so low; a modern cook may prefer to shorten the total considerably, or to slice the meat thicker — closer to an inch — to keep the original timing.
- LardingThin strips of bacon or salt pork are drawn through the surface of the meat with a larding needle. Lacking one, lay the strips over the top and tie them on with kitchen twine; the fat bastes the meat during the slow cooking and the recipe loses its point without it.
- Half a pint of brown gravyOne cup. Read "good brown gravy" as a proper reduced brown sauce — veal or beef stock cooked down and lightly thickened with flour — not a pan gravy. A cup coats and sauces about four portions.
- Coating, then pouringThe cutlets are coated with the sauce so it clings and glazes, then the remaining gravy is poured over them on the dish. Keep the sauce hot and just thick enough to film the back of a spoon.
- GarnishCauliflower florets and Brussels sprouts should be boiled separately in salted water until just tender, drained well, and tossed in butter before they go around the dish. Arrange them in small clusters at intervals rather than scattering them.
- YieldFigure two cutlets per person; the quantity is left to the cook, as it often is in this book.
Oscar Tschirky's Cook Book (1896) was assembled at the height of French service in American hotel dining rooms, and this entry follows classical practice: grenadins are one of a family of larded, gently cooked cuts — fricandeau, noix, grenadin — that appear throughout nineteenth-century French kitchen manuals and were later codified in the Escoffier repertoire. The larding is the period signature: threading lean cuts with pork fat was a standard remedy for dryness in slow cooking. Serving the meat pale and glazed with brown sauce rather than browned in the pan also suggests something about the era's table, where a uniform coating of sauce read as refinement and a scorched crust read as chophouse cooking.