No. 1334

Round Buttock Top Smothered

Tendre de Tranches a l'Estouffade

Lard a buttock-top of ten to twelve pounds, with large slices of larding pork, season it with salt, pepper and nutmeg. Line a brazier with slices of fat pork, some raw, lean ham, sliced carrots and onions, and a bunch of parsley garnished with thyme and bay leaf. Place the meat on top of this garnishing and set around it three calves' feet, split lengthwise through the center, moisten with a pint of white wine and broth (No. 194a), boil, cover the stewpan, and reduce the stock to a glaze, which degree can easily be told when the fat becomes clarified, and the vegetables begin to attach themselves to the pan. Moisten again slowly with some more broth, cover the brazier hermetically and let simmer in a slow oven for five or six hours, according to the size of the buttock; when cooked, strain the gravy, remove the fat from it and reduce. Glaze well the meat, bone the calves' feet, set them under a weight, after filling them with cooked fine herbs (No. 385). When cold, cut them up into square pieces, season with salt and pepper, oil and vinegar, dip them into a frying batter (No. 137), and fry to a fine color, lay the meat on a dish, garnish around with the fried pieces of calves' feet, and serve the gravy separately in a sauce-bowl.

← No. 1333 Deviled Spare Ribs of Beef Beef No. 1335 Round Buttock Top Baked →

For the Modern Kitchen

A classic French braise scaled for a Delmonico's kitchen: a whole ten-to-twelve-pound cut of beef round cooked down in glaze and broth, with the calves' feet doing double duty as gelatin for the sauce and as a fried garnish. The instructions assume you can read a pan by eye, and the two-stage moistening is where the dish is won or lost.

The hinge: reduce to a glaze, then moisten againThe first liquid is meant to cook away entirely until the fat runs clear and the vegetables begin to catch and brown on the pan bottom. That caramelized fond is the whole flavour of the finished gravy; adding the second round of broth too early leaves the braise pale and thin. Watch it closely at the end, as the step from glaze to scorched is a matter of a minute or two.
"Buttock top"The top of the round, sold today as top round or, in the UK, topside. A whole one at ten to twelve pounds is a special-order piece; a 4-5 lb roast braises well by the same method with the times cut by roughly half.
"Brazier"A wide, heavy, tight-lidded braising pan. A large enamelled cast-iron Dutch oven is the direct equivalent. "Cover hermetically" means seal it: a sheet of foil or parchment under the lid, or the old flour-and-water paste seal, keeps the reduced liquid from evaporating over five hours.
Slow oven300F (150C). At that temperature a large round wants five to six hours; the meat should give no resistance to a skewer through the thickest part.
LardingPassing strips of back fat through the lean meat with a larding needle. Top round is very lean and this is not decorative — it is what keeps the interior from drying. If you have no larding needle, barding (tying sheets of fat pork over the outside) is the usual substitute.
Calves' feetSold split at halal and Latin American butchers; pig's trotters are the common stand-in. They are here for gelatin, which is what lets the strained gravy reduce to a glossy glaze that coats the meat. Two envelopes of powdered gelatin will thicken a sauce but will not give the same lip-sticking body.
The cross-referenced numbersNo. 194a is a broth, No. 385 the cooked fine herbs and No. 137 a frying batter, each given elsewhere in the book rather than here. Any decent unsalted stock, a duxelles-style herb mixture and a light batter will serve.
The fried garnish takes a dayThe boned feet are pressed flat under a weight and must be thoroughly cold before they can be cut into squares, marinated, battered and fried. Plan it as a two-day dish, or press the feet the day before and reheat the meat in its gravy.
YieldA twelve-pound round is banquet scale, on the order of twenty to twenty-five servings. With the calves' feet in the gravy, leftovers set firm in their own jelly and slice well cold.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of some three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it reads like a professional French kitchen manual translated for an American audience — hence the doubled headings, Tendre de tranches à l'estouffade above and "Round Buttock Top Smothered" below. Estouffade and the English "smothered" both describe the same thing: meat cooked in a sealed vessel with very little liquid, its own steam and fat doing the work. The cut is telling. Tranche tendre is a butcher's term from the French breakdown of the round, and Ranhofer keeps it even while glossing it for cooks who bought their beef American-style. The calves' feet, split and simmered for gelatin and then boned, pressed, battered and fried as a garnish, are of a piece with the period's thrift; feet, ears and tails turned into crisp fried garnishes appear widely in nineteenth-century grande cuisine, and became far less common in restaurant cooking over the following decades.