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Beef, Stewed, and Mushrooms
Slice two onions and fry in a little butter; when quite cooked add a little flour and two table-spoonfuls of ketchup, season with pepper and salt; allow all to cook for about ten minutes. Cut some cold beef in very thin slices, sprinkle it with flour, and fry it with the onions and one pound of fresh mushrooms. Season to taste, and serve very hot. Probable cost, 1s. 6d.
A late-Victorian way of using up Sunday's roast, written for cooks who already knew what the pan should look like. The whole thing takes about twenty-five minutes once the beef is sliced.
- The ketchup is not tomatoIn an English kitchen of this date, unqualified "ketchup" means mushroom ketchup — a thin, dark, salty brew closer to Worcestershire sauce than to anything squeezed from a bottle today. Mushroom ketchup is still sold; a tablespoon of Worcestershire plus a splash of soy is the nearest common substitute. Tomato ketchup will make the dish sweet and pink.
- Cold beef means already cookedThis is a leftovers recipe. The beef is roast or boiled beef, chilled firm so it can be cut into very thin slices, and it only needs heating through — two or three minutes in the pan. Raw steak treated this way will toughen while the mushrooms are still weeping.
- Add liquid, or you have no sauceThe flour, ketchup and butter are effectively a roux with almost nothing to hydrate it. Once the onions and flour have cooked, work in about half a cup of beef stock or the reserved gravy; the mushrooms will release more as they go. Without it the flour stays raw-tasting and gritty.
- Cook the flour for the full ten minutesThe instruction to let it all cook for ten minutes is the hinge of the dish. That is what takes the pastiness off the flour and browns it slightly, which is where the colour and depth come from.
- A pound of mushroomsThat is 450 g, which looks like far too much for the pan and cooks down to perhaps a third of the volume. Add them in a wide pan over decent heat and leave them alone until they have given up their water and started to colour, or the dish turns grey and soupy.
- Which mushrooms"Fresh mushrooms" here most likely means field mushrooms or the cultivated white sort. Chestnut or portobello mushrooms give more flavour and stand up better to the ketchup; sliced thickly, they hold their shape against the thin beef.
- YieldWith a pound of mushrooms and the meat from a modest joint, this serves three or four with mashed potato or toast. The book gives the probable cost as 1s. 6d.
Cassell's was a household dictionary rather than a chef's manual, and its long run of "cold beef" entries — hashed, curried, minced, potted, stewed with mushrooms — reflects a kitchen economy built around one large weekly joint that had to reappear at table for several days without looking like the same meal twice. Mushroom ketchup, called for here, was the standard English store sauce of the period: mushrooms salted, drained, spiced and boiled down to a keeping liquid, long sold commercially as well as made at home. Tomato ketchup existed but was still the newcomer, which is why the book feels no need to specify.