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Toasts, Hamburg
When a small quantity only of any savoury fricassee is left, it may be warmed up as follows. Mince the meat finely, and put with it any seasoning that may be required. Mix it with the sauce, and stir it over a gentle fire until it is thick. Draw it away from the fire for a minute, and mix with it the yolk of an egg well beaten. Stir it over the fire again till it is hot without letting it boil. Turn it upon a dish, and let it get cold. Take one or two slices of bread a quarter of an inch thick. Toast them on both sides and cut them into three-cornered pieces. Spread the savoury mince thickly upon them, and cover the surface with a hard-boiled egg chopped small. Squeeze the juice of a lemon over them, and put them in a brisk oven for a minute or two till they are quite hot. Arrange them neatly on a dish, and serve them immediately garnished with parsley. Time, altogether, about one hour. Probable cost, 4d., exclusive of the fricassee.
A leftover dish dressed up as a savoury: cold minced fricassee bound with egg yolk, spread on toast points and flashed in the oven. Everything depends on keeping the yolk below boiling.
- The hinge: never boil the yolkOnce the beaten yolk goes in, the mixture must be heated only until steaming — roughly 160–175F. A boil curdles it into grains and the mince will weep on the toast rather than hold.
- "Brisk oven"Read this as 425-450F. The toasts are only there long enough to heat through — the recipe says a minute or two; any longer and the mince dries and the bread hardens.
- You need a fricassee firstThis is a second-day recipe and assumes leftover chicken, veal or rabbit fricassee with its sauce. Without the sauce, a few tablespoons of well-reduced velouté or thick béchamel per cup of minced meat gives the same body.
- Cooling is not optionalThe instruction to turn it out and let it get cold is what makes the mixture spreadable. Warm, it slides off the toast. Chill it until firm, ideally covered and refrigerated.
- Bread and cuttingA quarter-inch slice is thinner than most modern sandwich bread; cut it yourself from a firm white loaf. Toast, then cut into triangles — cutting first gives you edges that burn.
- The lemonA whole lemon over one or two slices of bread is a great deal of acid. Half a lemon, or a squeeze to taste, suits most palates; the juice is there to cut the richness of the yolk-thickened sauce.
- Yield and servingOne or two slices cut into three-cornered pieces gives roughly four to eight toast points — a savoury course or a light supper for one or two. They must go to the table straight from the oven; they go soggy within minutes.
- "Probable cost, 4d."Victorian pence, and expressly excluding the fricassee itself. The figure covers the bread, the eggs — a yolk for the sauce and a hard-boiled one for the garnish — and the lemon.
Cassell's groups a long run of these under "Toasts" — savoury mixtures spread on fried or toasted bread and served hot, usually as the savoury course that closed a Victorian dinner or as a breakfast and supper dish. The label "Hamburg" attached to minced-meat preparations in nineteenth-century English cookery books generally points to German practice, where finely chopped or scraped meat was a recognised treatment rather than a way of using up scraps, though the connection here is conventional rather than documented and the same book uses German, Italian and Spanish tags loosely. What the recipe seems to suggest is the economics of a household with a cook: a remnant of fricassee too small to serve again as itself was reworked with an egg yolk liaison, a garnish of chopped hard-boiled egg and lemon, and presented as a fresh dish.