Beef with Harvest Sauce (attempt #1) -- A Transylvanian Cookbook

The fun thing about knowing other historical cooks is that they find interesting recipes, teach you new techniques, give you intriguing challenges.  One in particular got me interested in this newly translated book:

The Prince of Transylvania’s court cookbook 

From the 16th century 

THE SCIENCE OF COOKING

You can find a copy of it here:  http://www.medievalcookery.com/etexts/transylvania-v2.pdf

I talked about it in my post on the 2018 Culinary Symposium -- he (G) told us stories about the book and had a recipe made up for us to taste.

I promised that I would give some of the recipes a try and put them in my blog, so here is my first attempt.

Original recipe (page 3):


BEEF WITH HARVEST SAUCE.

If you want to cook with a harvest sauce, prepare the meat like I told you. Put parsley roots, (parsley) leaves and onions into it. After it’s cooked, add six or seven eggs, according to your needs. After you’re done, put the eggs into vinegar and start whipping it. Then pour the meat’s juices into it. Pour it onto the meat again, but don’t boil it; if you boil it, its size will suffer.

(Footnote on "suffer":  Meaning; It will curdle. Tempering the egg/vinegar and broth mixtures will result in a creamy sauce. Note that this sauce is used several times in the cookbook.)


My first redaction notes:

The first issue I had was getting parsley root.  My parsley plant was suffering from the heat and from critter raids, so its roots were really not worth the effort.  It did have enough leaves for me to use.  I checked with G to see what he has used.  He had tried it with parsley root but found there was no taste difference when using small, peeled parsnips.  I couldn't get any parsnips, so I chose to go ahead without either one.

Fresh parsley!

To my shock, the only onion I had was part of a purple onion.  No brown/yellow onion at all in my stash!  So I chose to use that.  I chopped it and sauteed it in butter until tender and a little browned.

Yum!  Onions!

My big conundrum was about the quantities of broth, eggs, and vinegar.  How much?  G had recommended white wine vinegar and the recipe says "six or seven eggs, according to your needs."  My needs were small -- I had a two pound beef roast to cook and I just didn't think I needed a lot of sauce.  I know my sauce was to come out thick, "silky," and creamy but I just wasn't sure.  So I took the attitude of any good redacting cook:  I picked some amounts, tried it, and hoped for the best.

For the roast:  

2 pound beef sirloin tip roast, which I sprinkled with seasoned salt.  I cooked it using the rotisserie burner on my propane grill until it registered an internal temperature of "rare."  It didn't drip much into the pan below but it did release juices when I sliced it.  I used the water in the drip pan as well as the juices in the sauce. After I saw how little juice there was, I decided to add some bouillon, too.

Getting ready to roast

Roasted to rare!

For the sauce:

1/3 cup chopped purple onion, sauteed in butter
1 1/2 tablespoon finely chopped fresh parsley leaves
3 eggs
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
1/2 cup water + juice from roasting and slicing the beef
1 small spoonful of beef bouillon into the heated water + juice mixture

And the beef bouillon

To make the sauce:

The eggs were put into a bowl and whisked vigorously until I couldn't see any blobs of whites or yolk.  I wanted it to be as smooth as I could make it.  Then I put in the vinegar and whisked it some more until it was bubbly and smooth.

No lumps!  No blobs!

In the meantime, I heated the water and bouillon mixture in the same pan I cooked the onions in.  Then, to temper the egg mixture, I put several spoonfuls of the beef broth into it and whisked vigorously.  I poured that into the pan and whisked vigorously, while the whole mixture was over very low heat.

After it looked a little thicker, I added the parsley and onion.  It simmered for several minutes.  I noticed that if I stopped stirring it, it started to curdle -- that is, it looked like the eggs were getting scrambled!  But if I whisked it, the bits broke up and the sauce was reasonably smooth again.

Pretty colors!

Once I was convinced it wasn't going to get any thicker, I took it off the heat and put it into a serving container.

The Verdict

At the table, I spooned the sauce over the meat and tasted it.  The sauce was obviously too thin but the flavor was good!  A little salty, a little meaty, the parsley was a pleasant herbal undertaste, and the onion added a little zing.  I like it!  It paired well with the beef and we were all pleased to have it on our plates.  It was pretty, too:  the cream-colored sauce with flecks of green and chunks of purple contrasted nicely with the rare roasted beef.

Very rare and visually attractive

For my second attempt, I think I will use just a little beef flavoring (juices or broth) instead of the 1/2 cup of liquid I used this time.  I would like to taste more of the white wine vinegar, too, just like I tend to add a little extra lemon juice whenever I make hollandaise sauce.  I know, too, to keep the sauce moving when it is over the heat.

The first redaction made about 1 cup of sauce.  I think about half that quantity would have been right.

I have to classify this as a failure since my sauce did not turn out the way it was described to me.  But I will try it again and attempt to do better.  See tomorrow's post for Attempt #2.

UPDATE

I took the leftover sauce from this attempt and cooked it again, over a higher heat.  I stirred it continuously.  It thickened!  The flavor wasn't as exciting but it was still good.  Here is the result:

Thick enough to pile up