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Mironton of Beef
Peel and slice very finely three medium, sound, white onions and place them in a frying pan with one ounce melted butter and gently brown for five minutes, lightly stirring meanwhile. Thicken with two tablespoons flour, briskly stir for one minute, then shift the pan on the corner of the range. Slice the two pounds boiled beef left over from yesterday into pieces one-quarter of an inch in thickness and one and a half inches square and add to the onions; mix well with a wooden spoon. Season with a level tablespoon salt, half teaspoon white pepper, two saltspoons grated nutmeg, adding three-quarters of a gill good vinegar, half pint hot broth half gill tomato sauce and one gill demi-glace. Mix all well. Cover the pan, boil for five minutes, then place the pan in a hot oven for forty minutes. Remove from the oven; add half teaspoon chopped parsley and half teaspoon minced chive; mix a little, then pour into a hot dish and serve.
A classic French way with leftover boiled beef, written for a coal range and a professional larder. Two things need attention before you start: the salt, and the sauce base the original assumes you already have.
- Cut the saltA level tablespoon of salt for two pounds of already-salted boiled beef, plus broth and demi-glace, is far beyond modern taste. Start with a teaspoon at most and correct at the end, once the sauce has reduced.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup (4 fl oz), so three-quarters of a gill of vinegar is 6 tablespoons and a gill of demi-glace is half a cup. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, making the nutmeg half a teaspoon.
- Demi-glaceReduced brown veal stock, thickened and glossy. If you have none, reduce a cup of good beef stock to a scant half cup; commercial demi-glace concentrate also works, in which case cut the added salt again.
- "The corner of the range"A coal range was hottest over the firebox and cooler at the edges. It means move the pan off direct heat so the roux stops cooking while you add the beef.
- Oven temperatureA hot oven in this period is usually taken as somewhere around 400-450F. The dish is already boiling when it goes in, so the forty minutes is about melding and reducing, not cooking the meat through.
- The vinegar is the pointSix tablespoons sounds aggressive, but the sharpness against sweet browned onion is what makes a mironton a mironton rather than plain beef hash. Use a decent wine vinegar and do not substitute lemon.
- The beefIt must be boiled beef, not roast — brisket, shin or plate from a pot-au-feu. Slice it cold, when it holds together, and cut across the grain.
- YieldTwo pounds of cooked meat serves four to six. Traditionally served with boiled or mashed potatoes to take up the sauce.
Boeuf mironton is one of the great French uses for leftovers, built on the assumption that a household boiled a large piece of beef for its broth and then had to do something with the meat the next day. It belongs to the same family as miroton, a general term in older French cookery for meat reheated in a sliced-onion sauce; the name is usually traced to the arrangement of overlapping slices, though the etymology is not settled. The vinegar-and-onion combination is essentially a sauce lyonnaise, which cuts through the flatness that boiled beef acquires once it has been cold overnight. Its appearance in an early twentieth-century international collection reflects how thoroughly French professional cooking had become the reference grammar for American hotel and restaurant kitchens, right down to the assumption that a cook would have demi-glace on hand.