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Beef Au Gratin
Cut lean meat of roast beef left over from yesterday into thin slices. Finely chop one medium white onion and fry in saucepan with a tablespoon melted butter for five minutes. Place half the beef in a lightly buttered baking dish, season with half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons pepper, spread half the onions and sprinkle a half teaspoon chopped parsley over and arrange balance of beef on top. Season again with a half teaspoon salt, two saltspoons pepper, and sprinkle with a half teaspoon finely chopped parsley. Pour in one and a half gills tomato sauce, dredge over two tablespoons fresh bread crumbs, set in brisk oven twenty-two minutes, remove and serve.
A leftovers dish built on thin slicing and a generous sauce. The whole thing succeeds or fails on how thin the beef is cut, since already-cooked meat has nothing left to give.
- Slice paper-thinCold roast beef reheated in slabs turns grey and stringy. Cut against the grain as thin as the knife will manage, and chill the meat first if it is fragmenting.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so one and a half gills of tomato sauce is 3/4 cup. A saltspoon is a scant 1/4 teaspoon, making two saltspoons about 1/2 teaspoon of pepper per layer.
- Season with restraintAs written the dish carries a full teaspoon of salt and a teaspoon of ground pepper for what is likely two servings. Cut both by half and taste, particularly if the roast was already salted.
- Brisk ovenRoughly 400-425F in period terms, though the phrase was never exact. The high heat is there to brown the crumbs, not to cook anything through.
- Twenty-two minutes is longAt that heat the beef will be dry well before the time is up. Fifteen minutes is usually enough for the sauce to bubble and the crumbs to colour; if the top browns first, the dish is done.
- Crumbs and fatFresh bread crumbs need fat to gratinate. Toss them with a little melted butter or dot the top, or they will scorch in patches and stay pale elsewhere.
- Tomato sauceThis means a made sauce, not ketchup. Any smooth, well-seasoned tomato sauce works, thinned slightly so it runs between the layers.
- YieldProbably two servings, or three at a light lunch, in a small shallow dish. Use a vessel just large enough to hold two layers so the sauce is not spread thin.
Au gratin comes from the French gratter, to scrape, and is traditionally explained as the browned crust scraped from the dish rather than any particular sauce or cheese; on that account, a crumb topping under high heat, as here, is often said to be the older and more literal sense of the term. The recipe belongs to a large class of "r u00e9chauff u00e9" cookery, well established by the nineteenth century, dishes designed explicitly around yesterday's roast at a time when a joint of beef was expected to feed a household over several days. The measurements are a good period marker: saltspoons and gills were still standard kitchen units in American cookbooks of the 1900s.