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Potato Sandwiches
Cut a pound of cold roast beef into slices, and fry these gently in hot fat for two or three minutes. Take them up, drain them, and spread over them on both sides a layer of mashed potatoes a quarter of an inch thick. Dip them into egg and bread-crumb, and fry in hot fat till they are lightly browned. Serve piled on a white napkin. Time to fry the sandwiches, five or six minutes.
A Victorian way of turning Sunday's cold joint into a hot supper dish: beef slices jacketed in mashed potato, crumbed, and deep-fried. The whole thing succeeds or fails on how firm the mashed potato is.
- Firm, dry mash is everythingWet or buttery mash will slide off the beef and burst in the fat. Use a floury potato, dry it out over low heat after mashing, bind with an egg yolk, and chill the coated slices until the potato is set before crumbing.
- Cut the beef thickThe recipe gives no thickness for the meat (its quarter-inch refers to the potato layer), so cut the slices thick enough to handle; wafer-thin carving slices will curl in the first frying and refuse to hold a coating.
- The first frying is a warming, not a cookingThe beef is already cooked. Two or three minutes in hot fat is only to heat it and firm the surface, and longer will dry it out before it ever gets its potato coat.
- "Hot fat" means about 350-375F"Hot fat" -- the book gives no temperature or type of fat; a modern deep-frying range of about 350-375F suits the method, and the recipe allows five or six minutes for the sandwiches. Cooler fat gives a greasy, sodden crust.
- Egg and bread-crumbBeaten whole egg, thinned with a spoonful of water or milk, then dry fine crumbs. Press the crumbs on firmly and rest the sandwiches ten minutes before frying so the coating adheres.
- The napkinServing fried food piled on a folded white napkin was standard practice and does a real job: the linen absorbs draining fat. A rack over a warm tray does the same thing with less laundry.
- YieldThe recipe specifies only a pound of cold beef; expect to need at least a pound of mashed potato for a quarter-inch coat on both sides, giving perhaps four to six sandwiches, enough for two or three as a main course with a sharp sauce or pickle to cut the richness.
Cassell's belongs to a long line of Victorian household books preoccupied with the re-dressing of cold meat: a large roast was economical to buy and cook, but nobody wanted it served plain twice. Whole chapters of nineteenth-century cookery were devoted to rissoles, croquettes, hashes and "sandwiches" of this kind, in which yesterday's joint was disguised under potato, sauce or crumbs and brought back to the table looking like a new dish. The word sandwich here means only that something is layered between two coverings, not that bread is involved — an extended use of a term whose original eighteenth-century sense did involve bread. The technique is essentially that of the croquette, which British kitchens absorbed from French practice over the course of the century, applied to the most ordinary of English leftovers.