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Roulade of Beef, Arlequin
Procure a piece of the flank of beef, of three pounds, twice as long as wide; trim off the fat, split it in two in the center, crosswise, without separating. Season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper. Prepare a stuffing as follows: Three raw country sausages, skinned, two ounces fresh bread crumbs, one saltspoon thyme, half tablespoon chopped parsley, one ounce cooked lean ham cut into small pieces, to raw eggs, one saltspoon grated nutmeg, half teaspoon salt, half teaspoon white pepper and one medium-sized onion, finely chopped and lightly browned in butter. Thoroughly mix the whole together until well amalgamated, and then spread the stuffing evenly over the cut-apart beef. Roll up lightly tie all around with a string. Place a mirepoix in a large frying pan, lay the roulade on top, drop two tablespoons melted lard at the bottom of the pan, place the pan in a hot oven to bake for twenty-five minutes, or until a nice golden tint. Then add two tablespoons flour, stir it well in the bottom of the pan with a spoon; add to the pan one gill claret, half pint hot broth or water, one gill tomato sauce and one gill demi-glace. Mix well again; reset the pan in the oven and bake fifty-five minutes, turning the beef occasionally. Remove, untie, place on a hot dish and keep warm. Strain the gravy through a Chinese strainer into another saucepan, skim off the fat from the surface and let the sauce reduce on the fire to three-quarters of a pint; add three good-sized sliced pickles and three sweet Spanish peppers (red) cut into small, square pieces. Briskly cook for five minutes more, untie the roulade, pour half of the sauce over it. Pour the other half into a saucebowl and serve separately.
A braised stuffed beef roll from the era when a professional kitchen always had stock and demi-glace on hand. The measurements are hotel-kitchen shorthand, and one line contains an obvious typesetting error.
- "To raw eggs"Read this as two raw eggs; the printer dropped the w. Two eggs is right for three sausages and two ounces of crumbs, which is a fairly loose forcemeat that firms as it cooks.
- Old measuresA gill is half a cup, so the claret, tomato sauce and demi-glace are 4 fl oz each and the broth is a cup. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon.
- Oven heat"Hot oven" for the initial browning is conventionally taken as roughly 400-450F. The recipe gives no second temperature for the fifty-five minute braise; lowering to about 325-350F is a modern adjustment, to stop the sauce scorching before the flank is tender.
- The cutThree pounds of flank, twice as long as wide, split "without separating" means butterflied open like a book so it lies flat for the stuffing. A butcher will do this; the recipe has you trim off the fat, and the sheet is easier to roll if pounded to an even thickness.
- MirepoixHere it means the classic bed of roughly diced onion, carrot and celery laid under the meat to flavour the pan juices, not a finished garnish. It is strained out at the end.
- Demi-glaceA reduced brown sauce built on brown veal stock and espagnole, which professional kitchens of the period generally kept standing. Good jarred demi-glace or a concentrated homemade veal reduction stands in; plain stock will leave the sauce thin and it will need extra reduction.
- Country sausageUncased fresh pork sausage meat, usually seasoned with sage, salt and pepper. Skip anything cured, smoked or heavily sweetened.
- Chinese strainerA chinois, the conical fine-mesh strainer. Any fine sieve works; press the vegetables lightly to get the juices without pushing pulp through.
- Sweet Spanish peppersMost likely jarred or canned pimientos, already cooked and skinned, cut into small dice. Fresh red bell pepper will not soften much in the five minutes the recipe allows.
- Yield and carvingThree pounds of flank plus stuffing serves six to eight. Let the roll rest ten minutes before untying, then slice across the roll about half an inch thick so each slice shows the spiral.
The roulade, a flat sheet of meat spread with forcemeat and rolled, is one of the oldest ways of making a cheap muscle behave like a joint, and it turns up across Europe as beef olives in England, rouladen in Germany and paupiettes in France. Flank is a hardworking cut with the grain running straight along it, which is exactly what makes it roll neatly and slice into a spiral. The name Arlequin is the harlequin of the commedia dell'arte, whose costume is a lozenge patchwork of colours; in cookery the name is often said to have been attached to garnishes built from small, contrasting, brightly coloured dice, which may well be what the green pickle and red pepper scattered through this finished sauce are meant to suggest. The recipe's assumption that a cook has claret, tomato sauce and demi-glace all standing by in gill quantities places it squarely in the professional kitchen rather than the domestic one.