No. 1357

Sirloin of Beef with Jerusalem Artichokes

Contrefilet de Boeuf aux Topinambours

Lift the tenderloin from the short loin, saw the ribs from the beginning of the spine from the sirloin and remove the flat bone. Trim the sirloin into a long square shape and cook it either on an English spit, a cradle spit or else in the oven. For the latter, set the sirloin on a baking pan having a grater (Fig. 306), pour over some fat and for a sirloin weighing ten pounds allow sixty minutes for its cooking, when nearly done, salt, dress it on a dish, garnishing all around with some stewed Jerusalem artichokes (No. 2749); serve a separate sauce-boat of good thickened gravy (No. 405).

← No. 1356 Sirloin of Beef with Chicory and Souffled Sw Beef No. 1358 Smoked Round Top of Beef with Cream →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a professional brigade with a butcher on staff and a numbered cross-reference system, so the page assumes more than it states. The essentials translate cleanly once you know what the terms mean.

What cut you are buyingContrefilet is the boneless strip loin — the top loin muscle left after the tenderloin is pulled out of the short loin. Ask for a whole boneless strip loin roast, trimmed with a thin fat cap, rather than trying to break down a short loin yourself.
The butchery, in plain termsLifting the tenderloin, sawing off the rib ends and removing what Ranhofer calls the flat bone all serve to leave a single long rectangular muscle that cooks evenly. Any butcher will do this; a modern strip loin arrives in this state already.
"A grater"Figure 306 is a roasting rack or trivet set inside the pan, not a grating tool. It keeps the meat out of the rendered fat so the underside browns instead of stewing.
Oven heat, which he omitsThe page gives no oven temperature. As modern practice, start at 450F for the first 15 to 20 minutes to set the crust, then drop to 350F for the remainder.
Sixty minutes for ten poundsThat is about six minutes per pound, which would leave the beef very rare. Ignore the clock and use a thermometer: 125F at the centre for rare, 130 to 135F for medium rare, then rest 20 minutes before carving. A 10 lb strip loin will usually want longer than an hour at these temperatures.
Salt at the endThe original salts only when the roast is nearly done. Salting the surface an hour or more ahead, or dry-brining overnight, gives better seasoning and a drier surface for browning; either approach works, but do not salt halfway and expect it to penetrate.
Jerusalem artichokesSunchokes, no relation to the globe artichoke. Peel or scrub well, cut to even pieces, and stew in butter with a little stock until tender — they collapse quickly once soft, so check early. They contain inulin rather than starch, which some eaters find gassy.
The separate sauceNo. 405 is Ranhofer's thickened brown gravy. A pan gravy made from the drippings, deglazed with red wine and finished with good brown stock reduced to a coating consistency, stands in for it honestly.
YieldA 10 lb roast serves 15 to 20 as a main course. For a household, a 3 to 4 lb section of strip loin follows the same method and feeds six to eight.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of what he cooked during roughly three decades as chef of Delmonico's in New York, and its cross-referenced numbering — sirloin No. 1357 pointing to artichokes No. 2749 and gravy No. 405 — is the trace of a kitchen that assembled plates from a standing repertoire rather than from self-contained recipes. The garnish name is the giveaway of period fashion: topinambour is the French for Jerusalem artichoke, a North American tuber generally said to take its French name from the Tupinambá people of Brazil, several of whom were exhibited in Paris around the time the plant arrived, while the English "Jerusalem" is usually traced to a corruption of the Italian girasole, sunflower, the family the plant belongs to. Ranhofer also still offers the choice of an English spit or a cradle spit alongside the oven, a reminder that in the 1890s roasting before an open fire was a living technique in a first-class kitchen, not a nostalgia act, and that the oven pan with its rack was the newer convenience.