No. 1338

Rump a la Careme

Pointe de Culotte a la Careme

Bone and pare a piece of rump of beef weighing twenty pounds; remove the fat, and trim it so that it is much longer than its width; cover it with suet, roll lengthwise and tie it with fourteen rounds of the string, making a knot at each round. Put the rump of beef into a saucepan with half a pound of melted fat pork; brown slowly, turning it over frequently. Remove the meat after it is a nice color, drain off the grease, and cover the bottom of the sauce-pan with a thin layer of chopped onions and carrots, set the meat on top, moisten with a pint of broth (No. 194a) and half a bottle of sauterne wine, reduce the moisture to a glaze, and moisten again to the height of the meat with some good broth. Boil up the liquid, skim, and add a bunch of parsley garnished with thyme, bay leaf and a clove of garlic; season with salt, pepper and cloves. Cook slowly for five hours, carefully moistening it at times with hot broth so as to keep the liquor half of the heighth of the meat; drain off the gravy, skim off the fat, and add a pint of Madeira sauce (No. 492) reduced and strained. Untie, pare, glaze and dish up the piece of meat, pour around it one-third of the sauce, garnish around with stuffed mushroom heads (No. 650), sauted lamb's sweetbreads, and rice croquettes with parmesan. Serve the remainder of the sauce in a sauce boat.

← No. 1337 Rump of Beef a la Boucicault Beef No. 1339 Rump of Beef a la Chatellier →

For the Modern Kitchen

A full-dress braise from Ranhofer's Delmonico's kitchen, written for a banquet joint and cross-referenced to half a dozen other numbered recipes in the book. Scaled down and read closely, it is a straightforward braised beef.

ScaleTwenty pounds of boned rump is a service piece for twenty-five or thirty people. A 4-5 lb boned, tied rump or bottom round behaves the same way; keep the liquid at half the height of the meat and cut the cooking time to about 3 hours.
The hinge: reduce to a glaze, then remoistenAfter the first pint of broth and half-bottle of sauterne go in, they are cooked down almost to nothing so the sugars catch on the bottom of the pan. That glaze is what colours and flavours the whole braise. Skipping it gives you grey stewed beef in wine.
Pointe de culotteThe French name is the rump point, the tapering muscle at the end of the rump above the top of the leg. Ask a butcher for boned, trimmed rump or use bottom round; the piece is meant to be longer than it is wide so it rolls neatly.
Suet and fat porkThe joint is barded with a sheet of beef suet because trimmed rump has no fat cover of its own; sheet fatback or thin-cut unsmoked pork belly does the same. The half pound of "melted fat pork" is rendered pork fat for the browning -- roughly a cup; ordinary lard is the nearest modern stand-in.
Fourteen rounds of stringSeparate loops with an individual knot at each, not one continuous spiral. Any loop that slips can be cut and retied without the whole roll coming apart over five hours.
Cross-referenced recipesNo. 194a is the broth of the book's stock series and No. 492 its Madeira sauce, which in a kitchen of this kind would have been built on a reduced brown sauce. Good unsalted beef stock stands in for the first; for the second, reduce a cup of Madeira with strong stock and thicken lightly.
SauterneThe unaccented American "sauterne" of this period was often used loosely for white wine generally, though true Sauternes was already a sweet wine. Which was meant here is not clear from the text; a dry white with some body keeps the braise savoury, while a modern dessert Sauternes will push it sweet.
Temperature and vessel"Cook slowly" means a bare simmer with the liquid trembling; the recipe does this in a covered saucepan on the range. If you prefer the oven, a covered Dutch oven at a low setting will hold that simmer with less attention; check the level every 45 minutes and top up with hot stock.
GarnishesStuffed mushroom caps (cross-referenced as No. 650), sauteed lamb sweetbreads and parmesan rice croquettes are dishes in their own right. The beef stands alone; treat the garnish as optional unless you are reconstructing the full service.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its dedications read like a guest list: this rump sits among the beef recipes alongside one named for the actor Dion Boucicault. The a la Careme here honours Antonin Careme, the early nineteenth-century French chef whose codified sauces and grand pieces montees were still the professional standard Ranhofer worked within, and the construction shows it: a large joint barded and tied for the sideboard, braised on a bed of aromatics, then glazed and ringed with three separate made garnishes. Naming a dish for Careme was a claim of lineage as much as a description, and the numbered cross-references throughout the book reflect how a brigade kitchen actually cooked, with stocks and sauces standing ready to be drawn on by number rather than made from scratch for a single order.