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Sirloin of Beef, Orlando
Trim off a little of the fat on surface of a two-and-a-half pound piece tender sirloin of beef. Place a mirepoix in a roasting pan, lay beef over, season with teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper. Spread two tablespoons melted lard over beef, pour a half gill water in the pan. Set in brisk oven thirty-five minutes, turning and basting once in a while. Remove and dress on a hot dish. Skim fat from pan, place vegetables in a small saucepan, pour in one gill demi-glace and two tablespoons sherry, lightly mix and boil five minutes. Strain through a Chinese strainer over the beef, arrange a fried cauliflower with cheese around and serve.
A short high-heat roast finished with a pan sauce, in the French service style of a hotel kitchen. Everything hinges on pulling the beef at the right internal temperature rather than at thirty-five minutes.
- Brisk ovenRead this as a hot oven, roughly 400–450°F. A 2½ lb sirloin roast at that heat will reach about 125–130°F at the centre (rare to medium-rare) in roughly 35–45 minutes, but the shape of the cut matters more than the clock. Use an instant-read thermometer and rest the meat 10 minutes before carving.
- GillsA gill is half a cup. The half gill of water in the pan is ¼ cup, and the gill of demi-glace in the sauce is ½ cup.
- MirepoixDiced onion, carrot and celery, here used as a roasting rack and flavour base rather than as a vegetable to eat — it is strained out at the end. Cut it coarsely, about ½ inch, or it will scorch under the high heat.
- LardTwo tablespoons melted lard can be replaced with clarified butter or a neutral oil. Its job is to help the surface brown in a short roast, so use something with a high smoke point.
- Demi-glaceClassically espagnole sauce and brown stock reduced together by half; in modern kitchens often simply a well-reduced brown stock. Laborious either way. Good commercial demi-glace concentrate or a well-reduced beef stock will serve; if using stock, reduce ½ cup of sauce down from about 1½ cups so it coats a spoon.
- Chinese strainerA chinois, the conical fine-mesh strainer. Any fine sieve works. Press the vegetables lightly against the mesh to extract flavour without pushing pulp through and clouding the sauce.
- The sherryAdded with the demi-glace and boiled five minutes, which cooks off the raw alcohol edge. Use a dry sherry — fino or amontillado — not a sweet cream sherry or the sauce will turn cloying against the beef.
- Fried cauliflower with cheeseThe garnish assumes cauliflower already blanched tender, then dipped in batter or egg and grated cheese and fried. Blanch florets 4–5 minutes in salted water and dry them thoroughly before frying, or the coating will slide off.
- YieldA 2½ lb sirloin serves four generously with the cauliflower alongside.
The recipe comes from the era when American hotel and restaurant cooking was conducted almost entirely in the French idiom, and dishes were named for people, places and patrons with a garnish attached to the name. Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, compiled thousands of such formulas into a single volume for domestic use, which is why the instructions read like a line cook's shorthand: mirepoix, demi-glace and a chinois are assumed knowledge, and no yield is given at all. For the home reader, that single half-cup of sauce was by far the most demanding part of the dish.