To Make Glaze
Hard Sauce
Liquid Sauces
CASSEROLE OF BEEF
Sauté three or four sliced onions in a tablespoonful of butter. Put them when soft into the casserole. Cut a steak, taken from the upper side of the round, into pieces suitable for one portion. Put them in the sauté-pan and sear them on all sides, then put them in the casserole. Add a tablespoonful of flour to the sauté-pan, let it brown, then add slowly a cupful and a half of water and stir until it is a little thickened, season with a teaspoonful of salt, a half teaspoonful of pepper, and a tablespoonful of chopped parsley. Add, if convenient, a little Worcestershire sauce and a little mushroom catsup. The sauce should be highly seasoned, and such condiments as are at hand may be used. The sauce will be richer if stock is used instead of water. Turn the sauce over the meat, cover the casserole, set it in the oven and cook slowly until the meat is tender, then cover the top with parboiled sliced potato and return it to the oven for a few minutes to finish cooking the potatoes. The sauce should be of the consistency of cream, and there should not be a great quantity of it. Serve in the casserole.
FILLET OF BEEF
The fillet or tenderloin of beef is taken from the under side of the loin. It is the most tender and the most expensive cut of the beef, costing from eighty cents to a dollar a pound. The whole fillet is used as a roast. When sliced it is given different names. Cuts from the middle, which is the thickest part, are Chateaubriands. The Chateaubriand is cut one and a half to three quarters of an inch thick, trimmed, tied into a neatly rounded shape, and struck lightly with the flat side of the cleaver to smooth the top and reduce the thickness to one and a quarter or one and a half inches. It is cooked and served as a steak.
The next pieces are the mignon fillets. These are prepared in the same way as the Chateaubriand and should be about one inch thick and from two and a half to three inches across when finished. They may be broiled or cooked on a hot pan.
Cuts from the small ends are noisettes and turnedos; the former are cut one half of an inch thick and cooked in a sauté-pan; the latter are cut one quarter of an inch thick, and are cooked in a sauté-pan for five minutes only. The noisettes and turnedos should be brushed with glaze before serving (see Glaze, page [104]).