No. 1335

Round Buttock Top Baked

Noix de Boeuf Gratinee

Have a piece of the round top braized and cold, weighting two pounds, cut it into equal sized slices, not having them too thin; put in a stewpan or on a dish, piece by piece, the slices one on top of the other, and baste with a half-glaze sauce (No. 413); cover with a second dish, and set to warm in a slow oven. Mince half a pound of cooked mushrooms, fry them in butter, drain off the latter, and add a paint of half-glaze sauce (No. 413), four heaping tablespoonfuls of grated horseradish, and two tablespoonfuls of bread-crumbs, also a large pinch of chopped parsley. After the meat is warm, lift out the slices one by one, lay them on a long dish one beside the other, covering each separate slice with a part of the above preparation. When the meat has been replaced into its natural shape, cover it entirely with the remainder, besprinkle over with rasped bread-crumbs, and put to bake in a moderate oven, basting it frequently with the gravy the meat was warmed in. Garnish the border with potato croquettes (No. 2782), ball-shaped, and each one an inch in diameter.

← No. 1334 Round Buttock Top Smothered Beef No. 1336 Round Buttock Top, Parisian Style →

For the Modern Kitchen

A dish built on leftovers: cold braised beef sliced, sauced, reassembled and browned. The hinge is that the meat is already cooked, so everything after this point is gentle reheating — the oven work is for the crust, not the beef.

"Half-glaze sauce"Ranhofer's No. 413 is demi-glace, a reduced brown sauce. A good reduced brown gravy or a jarred demi-glace loosened with stock will stand in; it needs body enough to cling to the slices.
Oven temperaturesThe book gives no figures. A "slow oven" for the warming stage is somewhere around 275-325F and the "moderate oven" for the final browning around 350F. Neither should be pushed higher, since reheated braised beef dries and shreds quickly.
"A paint of half-glaze"A typesetting error for a pint. Two cups of demi-glace to half a pound of mushrooms makes a very loose mixture for spreading between slices; a cup is closer to workable, and the original quantity is worth treating as suspect rather than gospel.
HorseradishFour heaping tablespoons of freshly grated root, not bottled creamed horseradish, which is diluted with vinegar and dairy and will thin the sauce and curdle under heat. If using prepared grated horseradish, drain it well.
"Rasped bread-crumbs"Crumbs grated from the dried crust of a stale loaf — coarse and pale gold, not fine white crumb. Coarse dried breadcrumbs are the nearest supermarket equivalent for the topping.
Noix de boeufThe "nut" of the round — the top round, a lean muscle from the hind leg. Any well-braised lean beef of the kind, cooked the day before and chilled firm, slices cleanly; warm meat will crumble.
Reassembling the jointCut the slices in order and keep them in order, so the piece goes back together in its original shape. Slices cut too thin will collapse under the sauce; a scant half inch holds.
YieldTwo pounds of cooked beef serves four to six. The potato croquettes at an inch across are a border garnish, not a side dish.

A Little History

This is from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous record of thirty years' cooking at Delmonico's in New York, and it belongs to a category the book returns to constantly: what a professional kitchen does with yesterday's braise. A gratin in this sense means the browned crust, and the technique of slicing a cold joint, sauced between each slice, reforming it and glazing the whole is a standard nineteenth-century restaurant economy — nothing served twice looks twice-served. The horseradish is folded into a demi-glace rather than set beside the plate. Noix, literally "nut," is a French butcher's term used chiefly for the corresponding cut of veal, and the numbered cross-references — to the sauce, to the croquettes — show how the book was meant to be used, as a working system rather than a set of standalone recipes.