No. 1350

Sirloin of Beef a la Dauphiness

Contrefilet de Boeuf a la Dauphine

Remove the sirloin from a piece of middle short loin, suppress the fat and nerves, and pare to an oblong shape keeping on the flank, lard the meats with lardons of fat pork (No. 1, Fig. 52); season and roll the sirloin over on itself so that the meats are enveloped; tie firmly, making a knot at each round of the string. Cover the bottom of a braziere (Fig. 134), with slices of fat pork and sliced carrots and onions; over these place the sirloin. Crack two knuckles of veal, lay them around the meat and moisten with some good stock (No. 194a) as high as the meats; boil, skim and set it on one side to boil slowly, put the cover on the braziere and some lighted charcoal on this. It will take about three hours to cook; keep basting frequently. When the sirloin is done, untie and strain the stock which should be reduced to two-thirds; lay the sirloin on a baking sheet and cover it with a Soubise sauce (No. 543), well reduced and thickened with raw egg-yolks diluted with a little cream. Strew the top with bread-crumbs and grated parmesan, then brown in the oven to a fine color, dress and decorate the ends with stuffed tomatoes (No. 2842) and the sides with Dauphine potatoes (No. 2783). Serve separately the stock reduced with espagnole sauce (No. 414) and Madeira wine.

← No. 1349 Sirloin of Beef a la Bradford Beef No. 1351 Sirloin of Beef a la Degrange →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer is writing for a brigade with a coal range, a larding needle and a shelf of numbered mother sauces. The dish itself is straightforward: a rolled, larded strip loin braised in veal stock, then masked with onion sauce and gratinéed.

The cutContrefilet is the boneless top loin — what an American butcher sells as strip loin or New York strip in one piece. "Suppress the fat and nerves" means trim the fat cap and the silverskin; "keeping on the flank" means leaving the thin tail attached so it can be rolled around the trimmed eye.
The braziereA braziere is a deep braising pan with a dished lid meant to hold live coals, giving heat from above as well as below. A heavy Dutch oven in a 300–325°F oven does the same job; there is no need to put anything on the lid.
Three hours is not a roastBraised for three hours in stock, strip loin comes out fully cooked through and sliceable, not pink. That is the intended result here — the larding with pork fat and the gelatinous veal stock are what keep a lean cut from drying. Do not try to split the difference and pull it at medium rare; it will be tough rather than tender.
Knuckles of vealTwo cracked veal knuckles are there purely for gelatin and body in the braising liquid, which later becomes the sauce. Veal knuckle or split veal shank from a butcher does the same; canned stock will not, since it is the collagen that gives the reduced fond its gloss.
LardingLardons of fat pork threaded through the meat with a larding needle are optional insurance for a lean muscle. Barding — wrapping the rolled loin in sheets of pork fatback or thin-sliced fatty bacon before tying — achieves most of the same effect without the tool.
Soubise, and the yolk liaisonSoubise is a thick onion purée bound with béchamel. Once the raw yolks slackened with cream go in, the sauce must not boil or it will curdle; take it off the heat, whisk them in, and rely on the oven browning to set it. It should be stiff enough to sit on the meat rather than run off.
BrowningWith crumbs and parmesan on top, a hot oven around 450°F or a few minutes under the broiler gives the colour. The meat is already cooked, so this step is about the crust only — watch it, as the yolk-enriched sauce colours quickly.
The garnishes and the second sauceStuffed tomatoes and Dauphine potatoes (pate a choux mixed with duchesse potato and fried) are separate numbered recipes in the book. The sauceboat holds the strained braising liquid reduced to two-thirds, let down with espagnole and finished with Madeira.
YieldThe recipe gives no weight or number of covers. A whole trimmed strip loin of 6-8 lb, served in slices, would serve roughly ten to twelve as one course among several.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef of Delmonico's in New York, and it reads less like a cookbook than a working inventory of a great restaurant kitchen: several thousand numbered items, each cross-referring to the sauces, garnishes and stocks that make it possible. Dishes styled a la Dauphine take their name from the Dauphine, the wife of the heir to the French throne, one of a large family of court-flattering titles — Dauphine, Soubise, Conde, Conti — that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French cooking attached to particular garnishes. Soubise, the onion puree that masks the meat here, is generally traced to the Prince de Soubise's household in the mid-1700s, though as with most such attributions the story is traditional rather than documented. What the recipe really shows is the labour a Gilded Age restaurant could command: a joint larded by hand, braised on coals for three hours, sauced, crumbed, gratineed, then ringed with two more composed garnishes that are themselves full recipes elsewhere in the book.