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Larded Sirloin of Beef, Jardiniere
Neatly trim a little fat from top of the lean part of a two-and-a-half-pound piece tender sirloin of beef. With the aid of a larding needle lard the surface with a few small strips larding pork. Place a mirepoix in a roasting pan, lay beef and spread two tablespoons melted lard on top, pour two tablespoons water into the pan, season with a teaspoon salt and a half teaspoon pepper. Set in oven to roast forty-five minutes, turning it over and basting once in a while. Remove, dress on a hot dish, skim fat from pan gravy, pour in one gill demi-glace and two tablespoons sherry; mix a little, boil five minutes, then strain gravy through a Chinese strainer over the sirloin. Dress a jardiniere garnishing at each end of dish and send to table.
A short roast in the classic French manner, written for a cook who already knows what a mirepoix and a jardinière are. The oven temperature is never stated, and that is the one gap worth filling before you start.
- Oven heatThe temperature is never given. Forty-five minutes for a 2½-lb piece of sirloin implies a fairly hot oven; around 425F is a reasonable modern setting. Cook to internal temperature rather than the clock: 125-130F at the centre for rare to medium-rare, which is where this cut belongs.
- LardingLarding pork is back fat cut into thin lardons and threaded through the meat with a larding needle to keep a lean cut moist. Unsmoked fatback or fresh pork fat works; bacon does not, as the cure and smoke will dominate.
- MirepoixHere it means the bed of roughly diced carrot, onion and celery laid under the meat, not a finished dish. It lifts the beef off the pan floor and flavours the drippings; about a cup and a half is right for this size roast.
- GillA gill is half a cup, so a half cup of demi-glace goes into the pan.
- Demi-glaceReduced brown veal stock, thickened and glossy. Good tubs and concentrates are sold now; a well-reduced homemade brown stock is the closer substitute. Thin canned beef broth will not give the body the sauce depends on.
- Chinese strainerA chinois — the conical fine-mesh strainer. Any fine sieve does the job; the point is to catch the mirepoix and any solids so the sauce goes over the meat clear.
- JardinièreA garnish of vegetables cut to uniform batons or small dice, cooked separately and kept distinct: carrot, turnip, green beans and peas is the standard set. Cook and season them while the beef roasts, and arrange them in heaps at each end of the platter rather than around the meat.
- Melted lardTwo tablespoons of lard over the top bastes the roast as it renders. Beef dripping or clarified butter serve the same purpose.
- Rest and yieldLet the beef stand ten minutes before carving, which the original does not mention. A 2½-lb piece feeds four.
Jardinière — the feminine of jardinier, gardener — is the standard French name for a garnish of fresh vegetables cut to matching shapes and grouped by kind, long established in the grande cuisine vocabulary. The presence of a mirepoix, a demi-glace, a chinois and a larding needle in a single short paragraph tells you exactly who the book expected to be reading: a cook trained in, or at least imitating, the French professional kitchen, where these were assumed rather than explained. Larding itself was a practical response to the beef of the period, much of it from working animals and considerably leaner than modern grain-finished sirloin; the technique has largely fallen away for that reason, though it remains genuinely useful with lean cuts.