Daube (, or ) is a French slow-cooked stew, usually of beef, but other meat is sometimes used. The best-known is the , a Provençal stew made with cheaper cuts of beef braised in wine, with vegetables, garlic and herbs, and traditionally cooked in a daubière–a braising pot.
Terminology and history
The Oxford English Dictionary defines a daube as "A braised meat (usually beef) stew with wine, spices, etc". In The Oxford Companion to Food, Philip and Mary Hyman note that the word is a French culinary term indicating both a method of cooking and a type of dish. The Dictionnaire de l'Académie française dates the word to the 16th century, and says that it derives from the Occitan , a marinade.
In the 18th century, daubes were a specialty of the French town of Saint-Malo. The Hymans comment that there were many different types: "artichokes , celery, pork cutlets, goose— all these and many other foodstuffs besides were prepared ". Daubes remained popular in 19th-century France, but by then, they were nearly always meat dishes, usually beef, eaten hot. By the end of the 20th century, the term was largely confined to . The dish came to be seen as rustic and old-fashioned, and the copper pots—daubières—in which it was traditionally cooked became "a curiosity in antique markets".
Description
Meat
Cooks differ widely regarding which meat should be used for a daube. There is common consent that it should have a long marinade before cooking, but some say it should be cooked as a whole piece, others that it should be cubed or sliced. In their Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Simone Beck and Julia Child describe as a braised pot roast of beef with wine, tomatoes, and provençal flavourings:
Their insistence that the dish contains a whole piece of beef is not shared by some other cooks. Elizabeth David writes in French Provincial Cooking:
The recommended cuts of meat for a daube vary. David favours top rump (also called thick flank); Prosper Montagné favours the more expensive rump; and Patricia Wells advises using at least three cuts of beef from different parts of the animal, arguing that some – such as plats de cétes – enhance flavour with their cartilaginous bones, others – such as tende de tranche – provide purer meat with little muscle separation, and others – such as add both meat and muscle for added texture.