Use six or seven pounds of the upper round of beef for this dish. (It is very good cold when properly cooked.) The success depends upon very slow cooking. The vegetables give it a distinctive flavor.
Make several deep incisions into the meat with a thin, sharp knife, or with a steel. Press into them lardoons of salt pork about half an inch square, and two or three inches long. This is called daubing, and the butcher will ordinarily do it if requested. Put trimmings of pork, or two tablespoonfuls of drippings, into the bottom of a large iron pot. When it is hot, put in the meat, and brown it on all sides by turning it to the bottom of the pot. This will take about half an hour. Next dredge it with flour, and brown that also. Then put a small plate under the beef to lift it a little off the bottom of the pot, and prevent its burning. Fill the pot with enough boiling water to half cover the meat. Add a half cupful each of sliced onions, carrots, and turnips, and a sprig of parsley. Cover the pot very tight, so the meat will cook in steam; and simmer it for four or five hours. Add more boiling water when necessary. When the meat is done, place it on a hot dish. Place some of the vegetables around and over it. Make a gravy as follows: put into a saucepan a tablespoonful of butter; when it bubbles, add a tablespoonful of flour, and stir until it is browned; then add a cupful of liquor strained from the pot in which the beef was cooked. If there is not a cupful of liquor in the pot, add enough hot water to make that quantity. Season with pepper and salt. This will resemble a Spanish sauce. It can be poured over the meat, or served separately.
BOUILLI
This dish is prepared usually from the meat used in making soup. Take a piece from the lower side of round; trim, and tie it into good shape; place it in the soup pot with cold water, allowing one quart of water to each pound of meat. Let it come slowly to the boiling point, and then let it simmer for four hours. After it has cooked two hours add a whole carrot, onion, and turnip, parsley, celery, six peppercorns, three cloves, one teaspoonful of salt. The meat will be tender if cooked very slowly, and not allowed to boil; but having been put into cold water, its juices will be extracted. Therefore the water is used as soup, and the meat will depend on a good sauce for flavor. Any rich brown sauce will do. Tomato or horseradish sauce is recommended. Cut the vegetables into fancy shapes with cutters, or into dice, and place them on the dish around the meat.
FILLET OF BEEF
Time, thirty minutes in hot oven.
The fillet is the tenderloin of beef, and is taken from the underside of the sirloin cut. Remove, taking care not to make the meat ragged, the sinewy skin and the muscle from the top, and most of the fat from the other side. Fold the thin end under, trim it into good shape. Lard it plentifully, letting the whole upper surface be perforated with fine lardoons. Place in a small baking pan thin slices of larding pork, over the pork place a layer of chopped onion, carrot, turnip and celery; lay the tenderloin on top. Pour in the pan a cupful of stock, add one half teaspoonful of salt, one quarter teaspoonful of pepper, and a bouquet of parsley, one bay-leaf, and two cloves. Bake in a hot oven for thirty minutes, and baste frequently. The fillet should be rare. Remove it when done; strain off the gravy, and skim off the grease. Put into the same pan a tablespoonful each of butter and of flour; stir until they are browned; then add slowly the gravy strained from the pan; if not enough to give a cupful, add enough stock to make that measure. Stir until it boils; then add a canful of mushrooms (which have been drained), and let them simmer for five minutes; not longer, or the mushrooms will harden. Taste to see if the seasoning is right. Add a half teaspoonful of kitchen bouquet to make it brown. The sauce should be of the consistency of cream. A half cupful of Madeira or of sherry may be used in place of the mushrooms if preferred. Spread the sauce on the serving dish, and lay the fillet on it. Arrange the mushrooms top side up, evenly around the fillet. In carving cut the fillet diagonally, instead of straight across; and put a little gravy in the center of each slice. The time for cooking is always thirty minutes, for the weight is in the length, and not in the thickness of the meat.
HOW TO BUY A FILLET
A profitable way to obtain a fillet is to buy a large cut of the sirloin, remove the tenderloin, and have the top cut into two or more roasting pieces. Beef will keep for some time, and the butcher will hold it until called for. In this way it will cost twenty-two to twenty-five cents per pound, while, if bought by itself, it would be from eighty cents to one dollar per pound.
For a moderate sized family it may seem too much beef to buy at one time; but it is the one kind of meat that can be served very often, and there is no waste. It is good hot or cold, warmed over or hashed. The suet is the best fat for frying purposes, and the bones make good soup. Part of the sirloin piece can be cut into steaks, and one of the roasting pieces rolled to give variety. The flank can be made into Hamburg steaks, or into soup. If judiciously cut there will be little left over to cook again.