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Hamburg Beef, Smoked, to Boil
Soak the meat in lukewarm water, and let it remain over-night, then dry it, and cut away any discoloured parts. Trim and roll it neatly and firmly, and bind it with tapes. Put it into plenty of cold water, remove the scum carefully, and let it boil until no more rises, then draw it to the side of the fire, and simmer gently until done enough. If two or three carrots and onions are boiled with the beef, the flavour will be improved. Strew grated bread-crumbs over it before serving. Time, as a general rule half an hour may be given for each pound, after the water has boiled. Probable cost, 1s. per pound. Sufficient, beef weighing seven pounds for twelve persons.
A cured, smoked joint treated much as one would treat a gammon: long soak, slow simmer, crumbed surface. The instructions assume you know what smoked Hamburg beef is, which few cooks now do.
- What the meat isSmoked Hamburg beef was salted and smoked beef, usually from the round or brisket, sold as a keeping joint. The nearest things on sale today are smoked brisket sold raw and cured, or an uncooked salt beef joint; ready-cooked pastrami and cooked salt beef need none of this treatment.
- The overnight soakThe point is to draw out salt, not to soften the meat. Do it in the refrigerator rather than in lukewarm water on the counter, and change the water once or twice.
- TapesButcher's tape was flat cotton binding. Kitchen string wound at 1 in. intervals does the same job, and a joint that holds its shape carves in neat rounds rather than falling into slabs.
- Never let it boil after the scum stageThe single instruction that matters. Bring it up, skim, then hold the pot at a bare shiver, around 180F, with the surface trembling and no rolling bubbles. Cured beef boiled hard goes stringy and squeaks against the teeth.
- TimingHalf an hour to the pound gives 3.5 hours for a 7 lb joint, which is not excessive for a cured muscle worked as hard as the round. Judge by feel rather than clock: a skewer should meet no resistance.
- The vegetablesCarrots and onions are for the cooking liquor as much as the beef. Add them for the last hour or so if you want to eat them; whole and from the start, they will be exhausted.
- BreadcrumbsDry crumbs strewn over a hot, damp joint, exactly as with a boiled ham. Toast them lightly first, or the coating tastes of raw flour paste.
- Yield and costSeven pounds for twelve works out at roughly 9 oz a head as bought, and assumes a full table with other dishes; count on 8-10 oz per person hot, less if it is going cold and sliced thin. The shilling a pound is a Victorian price and carries no meaning now.
Cassell's is using Hamburg in its plain sense: beef cured and smoked in the north German manner and shipped through Hamburg, one of the major ports in Britain's continental trade. German Rauchfleisch reached British grocers alongside Westphalia hams and Hamburg sausage, and the dictionary treats it as an ordinary imported store cupboard joint rather than anything exotic. It has nothing to do with the Hamburg steak, which appears elsewhere in the same tradition and became the hamburger. The method here is essentially the standard British treatment for any salted keeping meat: soak, bind, simmer, crumb. That a book of this date could assume readers had a smoked seven-pound joint hanging about says a good deal about how households provisioned themselves before reliable refrigeration.