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Cotes of Beef, Romaine
Procure two single ribs of beef, trim off a little of the fat. Season all over with good teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper. Heat two tablespoons leaf lard in a braising pan, lay in the cotes one beside another and gently brown fifteen minutes on each side. Dress on a hot dish, remove all fat from pan, then pour in one gill claret and let reduce on range until nearly dry, then pour in one gill tomato sauce one gill demi-glace half a bean chopped garlic, half teaspoon chopped chives and twelve sliced canned mushrooms; lightly mix and boil eight minutes. Pour sauce over beef, arrange six timbales macaroni around the beef and serve.
A straightforward braising-pan rib steak with a quick pan sauce; the only real obstacles are the French kitchen vocabulary and the fact that thirty minutes in a pan will take most modern cuts well past where anyone wants them.
- Cotes de boeuf"Cotes" is côtes — beef ribs. "Two single ribs" means two bone-in rib steaks cut one rib thick, roughly 1.5 to 2 inches, about 1.5 lb each. Ask the butcher for bone-in ribeye or a two-bone rib roast split between the bones.
- The timing is for a thick chopFifteen minutes a side only makes sense for a steak that thick, and even then it will come out well past medium. Cook to an internal 130–135F for medium-rare and rest it while you build the sauce; the browning is the point, not the clock.
- A gillHalf a cup, so half a cup each of claret, tomato sauce and demi-glace. Claret is simply dry red Bordeaux, or any dry red.
- Half a bean of garlic"Bean" here means a clove, not a head; the usage is standard in American kitchen French of the period and is generally taken as rendering the French gousse. So half a clove, finely chopped.
- Demi-glaceReduced brown veal stock with a little tomato and a roux, and the ingredient that makes this dish taste like a restaurant plate rather than a pan of wine. Good tubbed demi-glace concentrate works; unreduced beef stock will leave the sauce thin and sharp.
- Leaf lardRendered fat from around the pig's kidneys, prized because it is mild and takes high heat. Ordinary lard, clarified butter or a neutral oil all brown beef just as well.
- Canned mushroomsCommon in hotel kitchens of the period. Sliced fresh mushrooms browned separately give a better result; add them with the tomato sauce.
- Timbales of macaroniCooked macaroni bound with a little cream sauce or egg, pressed into small buttered dariole moulds, baked in a water bath until set and turned out. Six small ones ring the platter as a garnish, not a side dish.
- YieldTwo thick ribs and about a cup of finished sauce — the claret is reduced away, leaving the gill each of tomato sauce and demi-glace — serve two generously, or four if the beef is carved off the bone and plated.
This is hotel French as it was written in American kitchens around 1900, when the great restaurant repertoire ran on a small number of mother sauces and a chef could write "one gill demi-glace" with confidence that any cook reading him kept a stockpot going. The dish is a côte de boeuf finished with a red wine and tomato pan sauce, one of the many that the day's generation catalogued by the hundred, each distinguished less by technique than by its garnish and its name. "Romaine" here means Roman in the loose culinary sense of the period, generally signalling tomato, garlic and a pasta garnish rather than any documented connection with Rome; such geographic tags were a menu convention, a shorthand for a set of flavours.