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Boiled Beef, Robert Sauce
Procure a four-pound piece of short rib of beef. Tie with a string, lay in a saucepan with four quarts boiling water. Season with a tablespoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper, adding four small scraped carrots, four small peeled white turnips, two medium-sized white onions, two stalks well-cleaned celery, three leeks tied in a bunch with a clove of garlic, two cloves, one bay leaf, a sprig of thyme and four branches tied-up parsley. Cover the pan, then let gently simmer for two and a half hours. Remove and place the beef on a large dish, untie, arrange the vegetables around, except parsley and garlic, untie the leeks, dress them around the beef and send to the table with a sauce Robert separately.
N. B. Skim the fat from the surface of the broth, then strain it into the white-broth pan.
A straightforward pot-au-feu style boiled dinner; the only real complication is that the sauce Robert is not given here and must be made separately.
- Sauce RobertThe recipe gives no method for it, so it was presumably expected to be found elsewhere or already known. It is a brown sauce base with onions sweated in butter, white wine and vinegar reduced, and Dijon-style mustard stirred in off the heat. The mustard is added after the sauce leaves the burner, as boiling turns it bitter and flat.
- The cut"Short rib of beef" here means a bone-in plate or chuck short rib section, not the individual cut ribs sold today. Four pounds of bone-in short rib, or a boneless chuck roast of the same weight, both work; tying keeps it in one servable piece.
- Start hot or coldThe recipe has the meat go into boiling water, which is the traditional choice when the beef itself is the dish rather than the broth; starting in cold water is the usual advice when the broth matters more.
- TimingTwo and a half hours at a bare simmer is about right for four pounds, but go by feel: a skewer should slide in with no resistance. Chuck may want three hours. Never let it boil, or the meat tightens and the broth clouds.
- VegetablesCarrots, turnips and leeks added at the start will be very soft after two and a half hours. Add them in the final 40 minutes if you want them intact for the platter, and use the aromatics (celery, onion, bay, thyme, cloves, parsley stems) from the beginning.
- Leeks and garlicThree leeks tied in a bunch with a clove of garlic means the garlic is bundled in for flavour and then discarded with the parsley. Wash leeks thoroughly; grit hides in the layers and will end up in the broth.
- The white-broth panThe note reflects a professional kitchen where a standing pot of light stock was kept going. At home, strain the skimmed broth, chill it, lift the set fat, and keep it as beef stock for soup.
- YieldFour pounds bone-in serves four to six with the vegetables. Serve with coarse salt, cornichons and the sauce Robert alongside, and keep a ladle of the hot broth over the sliced meat so it does not dry on the platter.
Sauce Robert is one of the oldest named sauces in French cooking, mentioned by Rabelais in the sixteenth century and generally traced to a cook called Robert, though the attribution is traditional rather than documented. Carême and then Escoffier fixed it as a demi-glace with onion, white wine, vinegar and mustard, and it settled into the repertoire as the classic partner for pork. The dish itself is bouilli, the plain boiled beef and root vegetables of the French household pot, which produced supper and a day's broth from one pot; a book like this presents it in restaurant terms, hence the offhand instruction to return the strained broth to a white-broth pan that no home cook keeps.