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Larded Sirloin of Beef, Stanley
Procure a boned, tender two-and-a-half-pound sirloin of beef. Pare and trim it nicely. Then with a small larding needle carefully lard the top of the beef, lengthwise, with thin strips of lard. Season with a very light tablespoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper.
Arrange in a small roasting pan a mirepoix. Lay the sirloin over the mirepoix; spread over two tablespoons hot fat and three tablespoons hot water. Set the pan in a brisk oven and roast for thirty-five minutes, turning it over once in a while and frequently basting it with its own gravy. Place the sirloin on a hot dish and keep warm.
Heat two tablespoons thick cream in a small saucepan, adding two ounces freshly grated horseradish, mix with a wooden spoon while heating for three minutes; then keep warm. Cut in half, lengthwise, three peeled bananas, lightly roll them in flour, and then fry in a pan with a teaspoon butter for two minutes on each side.
Skim all the fat from the gravy of the pan, add one gill demi-glace; then let boil for five minutes on the range. Strain the gravy on the dish around the sirloin; gently spread the horseradish sauce over it; then place the six pieces of banana on the beef around the horseradish and send to the table as hot as possible.
A short roast dressed in the Escoffier manner, with two garnishes that read oddly today: horseradish cream and fried banana. The instructions assume a professional kitchen with stock and larding equipment on hand.
- The cutA boned 2 1/2 lb sirloin here most likely means the boneless strip loin rather than a modern American sirloin steak. Ask for a small center-cut strip loin roast tied at intervals.
- "Strips of lard"Larding needles are threaded with firm pork back fat or salt pork cut into pencil-thin lardons, not soft rendered lard, which will not hold a shape. If you have no larding needle, tie a thin sheet of fatback over the top instead.
- MirepoixThe book expects you to know it: roughly diced carrot, onion and celery, often with a little diced bacon, a bay leaf and thyme. Here it works as a roasting rack and flavors the pan juices.
- A brisk ovenThe book gives no figure; somewhere in the 400-450F range is the usual reading. Thirty-five minutes at that heat should bring a 2 1/2 lb boneless loin to roughly medium-rare, but the reliable test is an instant-read thermometer at the center; pull it around 125-130F and rest it while you finish the sauces.
- A gill of demi-glaceA gill is half a cup. Demi-glace is reduced brown stock; a good commercial concentrate diluted to half a cup works, or use half a cup of strong beef stock reduced by half.
- The horseradish creamTwo ounces of freshly grated horseradish into two tablespoons of cream gives a stiff paste rather than a sauce. Increase the cream to a quarter cup or more if you want something spreadable, and keep the heat gentle and brief, as prolonged heating destroys horseradish's pungency.
- The bananasUse firm, barely ripe fruit. Two minutes a side in butter is enough to color the flour; anything longer and the halves collapse when you lift them onto the meat.
- Seasoning"A very light tablespoon" of salt means a scant one, and it is generous for this weight of beef. Taste as you would with any roast; you can salt the sliced meat at the table.
- Yield and serviceThe book gives no yield; a 2 1/2 lb boneless roast will feed roughly four to six. Everything must be ready at once, since the roast is dressed on the platter with hot gravy, warm sauce and warm fruit; carve at the table rather than in the kitchen.
Alexander Filippini, long a chef at Delmonico's in New York, built The International Cook Book (1906) around the classical French repertoire of named garnishes, in which a dish's second name told a professional cook exactly what would arrive on the plate. Banana and horseradish appear as "Stanley" here, though the name is attached to other garnishes elsewhere in the classical repertoire, so this should not be taken as a fixed definition. The name is popularly traced to Henry Morton Stanley, whose African expeditions made him a celebrity in the 1870s and 1880s, with the tropical fruit as the allusion, but that is tradition rather than documented fact. Whether Filippini or an earlier hotel kitchen fixed the combination is not documented. It is also a reminder of how quickly bananas moved from rarity to standard hotel stock as steamer traffic in the Caribbean trade grew in the late nineteenth century.