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Collops, Savoury, Minced
Put two ounces of fresh butter into a stewpan, and mix a table-spoonful of flour smoothly with it; keep stirring the paste till it is lightly browned, then add a little pepper and salt, a tea-spoonful of chopped parsley, and a tea-spoonful of savoury herbs, also half a pint of boiling stock or water. When smooth and thick stir in one pound of steak finely minced. Move it about with a fork, to prevent its getting into lumps, and when it is quite hot put the cover on the pan, draw it back, and let the collops simmer very gently for ten minutes; before serving, add the juice of a small lemon, or a table-spoonful of mushroom ketchup. Probable cost, 1s. 1d. per pound. Sufficient, two pounds for four persons.
A brown-roux mince, closer to Scottish minced collops than to anything sliced. It comes together in about twenty minutes and hinges entirely on how far you take the flour and butter.
- Brown the roux properlyThe colour of the finished dish comes from the flour, not the meat, since the mince is stirred into liquid rather than seared. Cook the butter and flour over medium heat until it smells nutty and takes a light brown colour -- the recipe asks only for "lightly browned" -- three to five minutes, and stop before it smells scorched.
- Half a pintCassell's is using the imperial pint of 20 fl oz, so half a pint is 10 imperial fl oz, about 1¼ US cups (9.6 US fl oz). Add it hot and all at once to the browned roux, whisking, or the flour will seize into lumps.
- Steak, finely mincedIn period usage this means beef cut from a steaking piece, minced fine, probably twice through the mincer. Coarse-ground supermarket beef works, but 85/15 chuck ground twice gives the fine, almost creamy texture intended. Avoid very lean grinds, which go grainy in a thin sauce.
- "Savoury herbs"Probably a period shorthand for the dried mixture along the lines of thyme, marjoram, and a little sage or summer savory sold as mixed herbs. A teaspoon of dried mixed herbs is a fair substitute; the parsley is listed separately and is presumably fresh.
- Ten minutes is enough, but checkFinely minced beef stirred through hot sauce cooks through very quickly, and the ten-minute covered simmer off the direct heat is about texture, not doneness. Longer will not improve it: the mince tightens and turns dry and sandy. Ground beef should reach 160F, which happens well inside the ten minutes here.
- Mushroom ketchupNot tomato ketchup but a thin, dark, salty mushroom extract, still made commercially and closer in effect to Worcestershire sauce or a dash of soy plus a little mushroom soaking liquid. The lemon alternative gives a brighter, quite different dish, so choose one and taste before adding salt.
- The stewpanA wide, shallow saucepan with a lid. "Draw it back" means move it to the cooler edge of a coal range; on a modern hob, drop to the lowest setting or slide the pan half off the burner.
- YieldThe instructions are written for one pound of meat, while the note says two pounds serve four. Scale the butter, flour, herbs and liquid with the meat if you are cooking for four; a pound feeds two generously over toast, mashed potato, or boiled rice.
Collops are slices — the word is generally traced to a Scandinavian or Middle English term for a cut of meat cooked quickly in a pan, and English cookbooks from the seventeenth century onward are full of Scotch collops, veal collops and collops of bacon. By the nineteenth century "minced collops" had become a distinct Scottish dish of finely chopped beef stewed in its own gravy, and it survives in Scotland as mince and tatties. The costing — 1s. 1d. per pound — is typical of the book's habit of pricing dishes for kitchens keeping accounts, and the mushroom ketchup finish points to a Victorian larder where bottled savoury extracts did work now done by stock cubes and Worcestershire sauce.