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Sirloin of Beef Cutlets, Tarragon Sauce
Finely chop up one and a half pounds lean sirloin of beef with four ounces of fresh beef marrow and place in a bowl. Finely chop together three branches well-washed parsley, one branch chervil, half bean garlic and add to the beef, with half gill cream, teaspoon salt, three saltspoons pepper and saltspoon grated nutmeg. Mix well until thoroughly amalgamated, divide the preparation into six equal parts, roll in bread crumbs, then give them a nice cutlet form. Heat one tablespoon butter in a frying pan, arrange the cutlets one beside another in the pan and gently fry for eight minutes on each side. Pour a tarragon sauce on a hot dish, dress the cutlets crown-like over and serve.
A chopped-steak cutlet enriched with marrow — closer to a French bitok than to a hamburger. The measurements and vocabulary are turn-of-the-century restaurant French rendered into English, and a few need translating.
- Half a gill of creamA gill is half a cup, so half a gill is 1/4 cup (60 ml). Heavy cream is what is meant; it binds the mixture along with the marrow.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. Three saltspoons of pepper is 3/4 teaspoon, and the nutmeg is 1/4 teaspoon — assertive but not unreasonable for 1.5 lb of beef.
- "Half bean garlic" and "branches"Half a clove of garlic, not half a head; "bean" appears to render the French gousse, which is a pod or husk. A branch is a sprig, so three sprigs of parsley and one of chervil, chopped fine.
- Beef marrowFour ounces of marrow means the soft interior scooped from cracked marrow bones, warmed slightly so it chops without smearing. Ask a butcher for canoe-cut bones; two or three large ones will yield enough. Marrow is the fat here — the sirloin should be genuinely lean.
- Chopping, not grindingHand-chopped beef gives a loose, tender texture that a food processor will destroy. If you use a grinder, use a coarse plate once and stop; overworking makes the cutlets springy.
- Eight minutes a side is too longThese are roughly four-ounce patties and will be grey and dry after sixteen minutes in butter. Four to five minutes a side over medium heat brings them to a browned crust with a rosy centre; ground beef cooked to 160F/71C throughout is the conservative target if that matters to you.
- One tablespoon of butterBarely enough for six crumbed cutlets in a single pan. Use two or three, or cook in two batches, and keep the heat moderate so the breadcrumbs brown rather than scorch.
- The tarragon sauceNot given with the recipe; the reader was expected to have one on hand. A brown or velouté base finished with tarragon and a splash of tarragon vinegar suits it, and a béarnaise also works. Make it before the cutlets, as it goes on the plate first.
- YieldSix cutlets, arranged overlapping in a ring on the sauce. That serves three to six depending on what else is on the table.
The recipe belongs to a tradition of chopped-steak cookery treated as a proper entrée rather than a way of using up scraps: good sirloin, cut by hand, bound with marrow and cream. The vocabulary gives the kitchen away — "branch" for sprig, "bean" for clove of garlic, the saltspoon as a unit of measure — all marks of a French-trained chef writing English for an American household. Beef marrow was a common larder item in a period when whole animals came into the kitchen and bones were roasted for their own sake; it is the ingredient that makes these cutlets succulent, and the one a modern cook is most likely to skip. Tarragon signalled a French sauce, and pairing it with beef in this way was within the classical repertoire of the period.