No. 1348

Middle Short Loin a la Norwood

Aloyau a la Norwood

For thirty pounds, prepare the middle short loin the same as for No. 1347, but remove most of the fat adhering to the flank, season with salt and pepper. Put the meat in an earthen dish with some carrots, onions, thyme, bay leaf and sprigs of parsley, olive oil and lemon juice. Macerate the whole for two hours, then remove the meat without the vegetables, tie the flank over the tenderloin, making a knot at each turn of the string, leaving an interval of three-quarters of an inch between each; wrap up the marinade with the short loin in several sheets of buttered paper, place it on a roast pan with some grease at the bottom of the pan, and some minced carrots and onions, adding a little water; roast in the oven; when the meat is nearly done, remove the paper, salt it and glaze, return to the oven to attain a nice color, then set it in a warm closet for about twenty minutes; it will take about two and a half hours to cook it. Dish the meat up, glaze it again, and garnish with quartered and peeled apples, previously placed in a buttered plate, lightly dredged with sugar and cooked in a hot oven. Add a garnishing of small potatoes cut olive-shaped, blanched and cooked in butter; add the vegetables from the marinade, to one quart of espagnole sauce (No. 414), and some good gravy (No. 404), reduce and skim free of fat, pass through a sieve and serve in a separate sauce-boat.

← No. 1347 Middle Short Loin Braised a la Messinoise Beef No. 1349 Sirloin of Beef a la Bradford →

For the Modern Kitchen

A banquet roast from Delmonico's, written for a thirty-pound cut and a coal range. Everything here scales down, but the timing does not scale with it.

The cutA "middle short loin" is the center section of the beef loin, bone in, with the flank still attached — essentially a whole porterhouse block. A butcher can cut you a 6-8 lb short loin roast; ask for the flank left on if you want to tie it over the tenderloin as directed.
Timing is the trapTwo and a half hours for thirty pounds means a hot oven and beef served rare to medium-rare. Do not scale that time down proportionally or you will have grey meat. Roast to internal temperature instead: 125-130F at the thickest part of the strip loin, resting carried out separately.
Oven heatRanhofer gives no temperature for the roast, only a range hot enough to cook thirty pounds in two and a half hours; the paper wrapping goes on before roasting and comes off near the end. The apples are finished in what the book calls a "hot oven," roughly 425-450F, until the sugar caramelizes at the edges.
Buttered paperSeveral sheets of buttered paper are a barding substitute: they hold the marinade vegetables against the meat and keep the surface from drying before the interior comes up. Buttered parchment does the same job; foil does not, since it steams.
The tyingKnotting the string at each turn with three-quarter-inch gaps is specified exactly in the text. The usual explanation for individually knotted loops is that they can be cut and lifted one at a time when carving, without the whole roast falling apart.
"Warm closet"The plate warmer or cooling oven of a range — a resting spot around 120-140F. Twenty minutes of rest on a large roast is the minimum; loosely tented on a board off the heat achieves the same thing.
GlazeNot a sugar glaze. Glace de viande, veal or beef stock reduced to a syrup, brushed on and returned to the oven to set glossy. A well-reduced homemade stock will do; commercial demi-glace concentrate is the shortcut.
The sauceEspagnole (No. 414) is the brown mother sauce, and No. 404 is a meat gravy — together they make a sauce that needs a day's stock-making behind it. A good reduced brown stock finished with the strained marinade vegetables and the pan drippings gets you to the same place.
Marinate coldTwo hours in oil, lemon and aromatics belongs in the refrigerator, not on a sideboard. Let the meat come back toward room temperature for an hour before it goes in the oven so it roasts evenly.
Olive-shaped potatoesPommes cocotte: small potatoes turned to seven-sided olives with a paring knife, blanched, then finished in butter. Small whole new potatoes browned in butter are the practical substitute.

A Little History

The recipe comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium he assembled from more than thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York. The naming convention — à la Norwood, à la Bradford, à la Messinoise in the entries on either side — was standard practice in nineteenth-century French-American kitchens: a garnish and sauce combination was fixed, given a name, and repeated, so a maître d'hôtel could write a menu and the kitchen would know exactly what to send. Many such names honored patrons, hostesses or places, and in most cases the connection is now untraceable. What marks this version out from its neighbors is the roasted apple garnish, more usual with pork or goose, paired here with a beef loin that has first been macerated in oil and lemon.