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Beat a piece of rump steak, or fillet to make it tender; sprinkle it well with salt and some chopped herbs, and leave it for an hour; then lard it and marinate it as follows: Half a pint of red wine (Australian Harvest Burgundy is best), half a glass of vinegar, a pinch of spice, and a bouquet of herbs; leave it in this for twenty-four hours, then take it out, drain it well, sprinkle it with flour, and roast it for twenty minutes before a clear fire, braize it till quite tender, then press and glaze it. The thin end sirloin is excellent cooked this way. Serve cold. of a No. 78. Manzo con sugo di Barbabietole (Fillet of Beef) Ingredients: Beef, beetroot, salt.
Cut up three raw beetroots, put them into an earthenware pot and cover them with water. Keep them in some warm place, and allow them to ferment for five, six, or eight days according to the season; the froth at the top of the water will indicate the necessary fermentation. Then take out the pieces of beet- DECAMERON root, skim off all the froth, and into the fermented liquor put a good piece of tender rump steak or fillet with some salt. Braize for four hours and serve.
Two beef recipes run together here, and the transcription has scrambled a line: the phrase "The thin end sirloin is excellent cooked this way. Serve cold. of a" should read "The thin end of a sirloin is excellent cooked this way. Serve cold." The first dish is a larded, wine-marinated joint served cold; the second is a braise in fermented beetroot liquor.
- Imperial measuresThis is a British book, so half a pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups. "Half a glass" of vinegar is vague; period cookery reckoned a wineglassful at about 2 fl oz, so this may be only an ounce or so — enough to sharpen the wine, not to dominate it.
- The wine"Australian Harvest Burgundy" would have been an Australian red sold under the borrowed Burgundy name, not a Burgundy in any French sense; the details of the brand itself are not documented here. Any dry, fairly full red will do the job the recipe wants.
- LardingLarding means threading strips of chilled pork back fat through the lean with a larding needle. Modern rump and fillet are leaner than their Victorian equivalents, so this is not merely decorative; barding with a fat sheet or a thin layer of caul is a reasonable substitute if you have no needle.
- "Before a clear fire"The joint is set in front of open flame, not over it, and turned. The book gives no oven equivalent; twenty minutes in a very hot oven would approximate it, simply to colour and set the surface — the meat is nowhere near done at that point.
- Braise, press and glazeAfter the initial roast the meat goes into a covered pot with a little liquid at a bare simmer, around 300F, until tender. Pressing means cooling it under a weighted board so it slices cleanly; glazing means brushing it with a reduced, gelatinous stock that sets glossy. Both steps only make sense because the dish is served cold.
- The beetroot fermentThree raw beets under water in a warm place for five to eight days is a plain lacto-ferment, close to Eastern European beet kvas. Skim and discard the froth as instructed. If the liquor smells cheesy, sour-sweet or shows fuzzy coloured mould rather than a clean white film, throw it out and start again — a healthy ferment smells sharply of earth and vinegar.
- Timing on the second dishFour hours is right for rump at a low simmer, but not for fillet, which will be dry and grey long before then. Use rump, brisket or shin if you intend to follow the full time.
- YieldA 3 lb joint from either recipe serves six to eight. The cold larded beef is better on the second day, sliced thin.
The Cook's Decameron (1901), compiled by Mrs W. G. Waters, borrows Boccaccio's frame: ten companions shut away for ten days, each day producing a menu instead of a tale, with the Italian recipes running to over two hundred numbered entries. Its purpose was frankly missionary — to persuade English households that Italian cooking meant something other than macaroni, at a period when olive oil was still an unfamiliar article in most English kitchens (the tale that it was bought only at the chemist is often repeated but hard to document). The second recipe here is the more interesting of the pair: souring beef in fermented beetroot liquor belongs to a broad Central and Eastern European tradition of beet kvas, the same sour base that underlies older borschts, and its appearance in an Italian collection may point to the kitchens of the north — Trieste, Friuli, the old Austrian border country — rather than anything Tuscan.<br><br>The first recipe, with its larding needle, its day-long marinade and its final pressing and glazing, is grand-service technique scaled down for a private cook: a joint built to be carved cold on a buffet.