Braise three pounds of beef upon twenty little onions, ten mushrooms, and two glasses of red wine, salt, pepper, thyme and bay-leaf; cook for one and one-half hours with not too hot a fire. After that, place the beef on an oval dish; keep it hot; stir two tablespoonfuls of demi-glaze into the vegetables and let it boil up. Cut some slices of the beef, and strain the sauce over all.
Braise a tongue with two glasses of Madeira, one carrot, one onion, thyme, bay-leaf, for two hours. Take seven tomatoes cut in pieces, four carrots cut in two and three in four, about one-half inch long, ten smallish onions, and braise them all together; then add two large table-spoonfuls of demi-glaze, some salt and pepper. Serve all very hot on an oval dish.
Braised tongue eats very well with spinach, carrots or sorrel.
Take the raw beef, either rump-steak or fillet, and brown it in the pan in some butter. Then add a little boiling water. Add then six or eight chopped shallots, the hearts of two celeries chopped, a few small and whole carrots, pepper, salt, two cloves. Before serving, bind the sauce with a little flour and pour all over the meat.
For this national dish that part of the animal called the "spiering" is used, which is cut from near the neck. What is called fresh silverside in England answers very well. Cut the beef into slices about half-an-inch thick and divide the slices into four pieces. This you can do with a piece of four pounds. For a piece of four pounds, cook first of all four large fried onions in fat. Put the beef in the hot fat when the onions are colored, and sauté it; that is, keep moving the meat about gently. Take the meat out and place it on a dish. Add to the fat two dessert-spoonsful of flour and let it cook gently for five minutes, adding a good pint of water. Pass the sauce through a tammy, over the onions, and put the meat back in it, and it ought to cover them. Then add a dessert-spoonful of good vinegar and a strong bunch of herbs. Stew for an hour, take off the fat and remove the bunch of herbs. Heat up again and serve.
The real name of this dish is _Miroton de la Concierge_, and it is currently held that only _concierges_ can do it to perfection. Put a handful of minced onion to fry in butter; when it is nearly cooked, but not quite, add a dessert-spoonful of flour, and stir it till all is well colored. Pour on it a little gravy, or meat-juice of some kind, and let it simmer for ten minutes after it begins to steam again. Then take your beef, which must be cold, and cut in small slices; throw them in and let it all cook for a quarter of an hour, only simmering, and constantly stirring it, so that though it becomes considerably reduced it does not stick to the pan.