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BEEF PATTIES (another way)
Take thick slices of bread, a week old if it can be obtained, and make them of the desired form and size with a tin cutter. Scoop out the middle to receive the mince, prepared as in the preceding recipe. Dip each piece of bread into cream, and when drained brush them with white of egg, and dredge bread-crumbs, or bread-raspings, over them. Fry in good fresh butter, fill them with the mince, made hot, and send to table on a napkin.
This is a fried bread case — what French cookery calls a croustade — filled with hot minced beef. The recipe assumes you already have the mince from the preceding page, so plan that first.
- The filling is not here"prepared as in the preceding recipe" refers back to a mince given on the previous page, which we cannot see; period beef mince of this sort was generally cooked beef chopped fine and moistened with gravy or stock and seasoned, but the details here are unknown. Any well-seasoned, fairly thick beef mince works; it must be thick enough not to soak the case, and hot when it goes in, as the recipe specifies.
- Week-old bread is the pointFresh crumb collapses in cream and disintegrates in butter. A dense white loaf left uncovered two or three days, cut in slices about 1 to 1 1/2 inches thick, will hold its shape. A sandwich loaf that stays soft indefinitely is the wrong bread for this.
- Cutting and scoopingA "tin cutter" is a plain round or fluted cutter; 2 1/2 to 3 inches across suits this. Hollow each round with a small knife or a smaller cutter pressed part-way down, leaving a base and walls about 1/3 inch thick. The scooped crumb can be dried for crumbs, though raspings proper were made from crusts.
- Bread-raspingsDried crusts grated to a coarse powder, a standard store in nineteenth-century kitchens. Dry breadcrumbs or panko are the direct equivalent; they brown faster than fresh crumbs, so watch the pan.
- Dip, drain, brushThe cream soak should be brief — a second or two a side. Drain properly on a rack, then brush with lightly beaten egg white and coat. A saturated case will steam rather than crisp and may fall apart in the fat.
- Frying in butterThe recipe says good fresh butter, which browns fast and can burn; clarified butter, or butter with a spoonful of neutral oil, over moderate heat is safer. Turn the cases until evenly golden, then drain on paper before filling.
- TimingThe recipe has the mince "made hot" and the patties sent straight to table, so fill at the last moment and serve at once. Cases left standing filled go soggy from the inside.
- Yield and serviceThe recipe gives no yield; it depends on your loaf and cutter. The "napkin" is a folded linen cloth on the serving dish, which absorbs residual butter; a warmed plate lined with paper does the same job.
Bread cases like these belong to a broad nineteenth-century family of dishes built on the problem of yesterday's roast. A large joint was the centrepiece of the Victorian dinner, and the cold remains had to reappear in a form that did not look like remains — hence the mince, the crisp shell and the folded napkin, all of which announce that this is a made dish rather than a leftover. The technique is borrowed from French practice, where hollowed fried bread croustades held everything from game purée to mushrooms, and the same idea survives in the modern bread-cup canapé. The recipe teaches a transferable method: the egg-white-and-crumb coat is a seal, and the same coating logic underlies croquettes and cutlets. The instruction to seek bread "a week old if it can be obtained" is a quiet reminder that in a household baking or buying daily, genuinely stale bread was a resource to be scheduled for, not an accident.