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Beef Braise, Au Pain Perdue
Procure a three-pound piece tender rump of beef with all fat on one side. Cut from a piece of larding pork four long strips fourth of an inch thick. Mix on a plate a tablespoon freshly chopped parsley with half a bean chopped garlic. Roll pork strips in the parsley, etc., then with a large larding needle insert the strips into the lean part of beef. Season with a teaspoon salt and a half teaspoon pepper. Heat two tablespoons lard in a braising pan, add beef and brown fifteen minutes, turning it once in a while, lift up beef, lay on a plate. Add two tablespoons flour to the pan, stir well, then moisten with half pint claret and pint water, mix well and add the beef. Scrape twelve small new carrots, peel twelve small white onions and brown in a tablespoon melted butter in a frying pan for eight minutes, or till a nice brown, and add to beef. Tie in a bunch two branches parsley, one of chervil, one of garlic, a sprig thyme, one bay leaf and one clove, add to beef. Season with a teaspoon salt, half teaspoon pepper, cover pan and boil ten minutes, then set in moderate oven two hours. Remove, dress beef on a hot dish, skim off fat from surface of sauce, boil ten minutes. Remove the bunch of herbs, pour contents of pan over beef, arrange twelve slices of pain perdue around beef and serve.
A straightforward French-style braise, with two details that trip up modern cooks: the larding and the garnish, neither of which the original bothers to explain.
- Moderate ovenRead that as 325-350F. The pan is covered and already at a boil when it goes in, so the oven is only holding a bare simmer for the two hours.
- Larding pork and needle"Larding pork" is fresh unsmoked back fat or fatback, cut as the recipe says into long strips a quarter of an inch thick and threaded through the lean with a larding needle. Salt pork blanched briefly will stand in; bacon brings smoke the dish does not want. Without a needle, cut deep slits with a thin knife and push the strips in with the handle of a wooden spoon.
- "Half a bean chopped garlic"A bean of garlic is a clove, so this is half a clove chopped with the parsley for the lardons. The herb bundle later calls for "one of garlic" in a list of branches, which may mean a stalk of green garlic; a clove tied in with the branches is the usual modern reading.
- ClaretIn an American cookbook of this period, claret means red Bordeaux. Any dry, moderately tannic red works; half a pint is one cup, and the pint of water makes two cups more.
- Pain perdueHere it is the savoury sense: slices of stale bread dipped in milk and beaten egg and fried in butter, set round the meat to soak up sauce. No sugar, no cinnamon. Cut them thick and fry them while the sauce reduces so they arrive crisp.
- ChervilRarely stocked and it wilts fast. A little flat-leaf parsley with a few tarragon leaves gives a close approximation of its faint anise note.
- Two hours may not be enoughA three-pound rump piece from a modern steer is often still firm at two hours. Test with a skewer and give it another thirty to sixty minutes if it resists; the vegetables added at the start will be very soft by then, which is how the dish was meant to look.
- YieldThree pounds of boneless beef with twelve carrots and twelve onions serves six generously, eight with the fried bread counted in.
This is a boeuf à la mode in all but name: rump larded with seasoned pork fat, browned, floured, moistened with red wine, and stewed slowly with glazed baby carrots and button onions and a tied bouquet. The larding is the older part of the technique, and is often said to date from a period when working cattle yielded lean, dry meat that needed fat threaded through it to survive long cooking; it survives in French kitchens more as a matter of texture and seasoning than necessity. Pain perdu means "lost bread"—bread too stale to eat that is reclaimed by soaking and frying—and it was served savoury alongside meat as well as sweet with sugar. The book's spelling, pain perdue, is the ungrammatical form common in American cookbooks of the period, where French dish names were copied by ear as much as by eye.