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Ragout, Dutch
Cut in one-inch-square slices one and a half pounds tenderloin of beef, then cut two fresh veal kidneys in same size pieces. Season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper and keep on a plate until required. Heat a tablespoon butter in frying pan, add one finely sliced onion, a finely sliced green pepper, and brown three minutes, then add the beef and kidneys and briskly cook for eight minutes, occasionally tossing meanwhile. Pour in two gills demi-glace one gill of tomato sauce two tablespoons sherry, a half teaspoon freshly chopped parsley, and toss well while cooking for five minutes. Finally slice two cold boiled potatoes and plunge in boiling fat for five minutes, drain on a cloth, add potatoes to the stew, mix well, cook for two minutes, pour in a deep dish and serve.
A quick sauté-and-glaze stew rather than a long braise, so everything depends on having the sauce ready before the meat hits the pan. Prep the demi-glace, tomato sauce and boiled potatoes first; total cooking time is under twenty minutes.
- GillsA gill is half a cup. Two gills demi-glace is 1 cup, one gill tomato sauce is 1/2 cup.
- Demi-glaceIn an early twentieth-century professional kitchen this was espagnole reduced with brown stock, typically made in quantity. A cup of good reduced beef stock, or commercial demi-glace concentrate diluted to a light coating consistency, stands in without apology.
- The kidneys are the hingeVeal kidneys turn grainy and ammoniac the moment they overcook. Strip the fine membrane and cut out the white core and fatty knot before dicing, and treat the eight minutes as a maximum — they should stay pink-centred and firm, not grey. Sear them hard so they colour before they weep.
- Cut size"One-inch-square slices" means pieces roughly 1 inch across; the recipe does not specify thickness. Keep beef and kidney the same size so they finish together.
- Green pepperAn ordinary green bell pepper, cored and thinly sliced. Three minutes with the onion softens it without collapse.
- The potatoesBoiled potatoes, cooled, sliced, then deep-fried; modern practice would put the fat somewhere around 350-375F, though the recipe specifies only "boiling fat." Watch them rather than the clock and pull them when crisp and golden, then drain. Adding them at the very end is the point; they go in to hold their crust, not to soften.
- Pan sizeUse a wide sauté pan, 12 inches or more. Crowding 1 1/2 lb of beef plus two kidneys into a small skillet steams the meat and no browning happens.
- SherryDry or medium-dry (fino or amontillado), not cream sherry. It goes in with the sauce and has five minutes to lose its raw edge.
- YieldServes four generously as a main course with bread or a green salad; the potatoes are the starch.
Despite the name, there is little Dutch about this beyond the pairing of beef with kidney and fried potatoes — the method is straight French hotel cookery, built on demi-glace and finished with sherry, of the sort Alexander Filippini and his contemporaries turned out by the hundred. The International Cook Book belongs to a wave of early twentieth-century American compendia that catalogued dishes by nation, sometimes on firm ground and sometimes on a chef's loose sense of what sounded foreign; a national label often marked one distinguishing ingredient rather than any real provenance. Ragout itself comes from the French ragoûter, to revive the appetite, and originally described a well-seasoned made dish rather than a slow stew. Veal kidneys are generally thought to have been inexpensive and unremarkable on hotel menus in this period, which may be why they sit here beside tenderloin without comment — a pairing that would seem to bring together cuts of very different standing, and one a modern butcher's counter no longer makes easy.