Beef

Since some thirty years ago Virginia Woolf embalmed the delicious Bœuf en daube in her novel To the Lighthouse, its aroma has been stealing into readers’ minds with a poetic fragrance which has removed it far from the realm of everyday life. Here apparently was a dish which Mrs Dalloway’s cook took three days to make and which at a critical moment was ripe for serving.

Bœuf en daube belongs to the ancient category of hermetic cookery, like the gipsies’ hedgehog wrapped in clay. The daubière, its lid sealed with a paste of flour and water, lay all night in the smouldering ashes of a wood fire, with pieces of live charcoal on the lid.