Beef Balls
Chop cold roast beef very fine, leaving in the fat, but removing all pieces of gristle. To 1 cupful of meat put a small cupful of fine bread crumbs, salt and pepper, enough stock to moisten, a teaspoonful of Worcestershire sauce, and 1 well-beaten egg. Set aside to cool, and when cold form into balls, roll in egg and fine crumbs, and fry for two minutes.
A leftover dish: the meat is already cooked, so the frying is only about browning the crust and heating the centre. Everything hinges on getting the mixture firm enough to hold a ball.
- Chill, don't just coolThe instruction to set the mixture aside and shape it "when cold" is the working part of the recipe. Thirty to sixty minutes in the refrigerator lets the crumbs absorb the stock and the beef fat set, which is what keeps the balls from falling apart in the fat.
- "Enough stock to moisten"Start with 2 tablespoons per cup of meat and add by the spoonful. The mass should just hold together when squeezed; if it slumps, you have gone too far and will need more crumbs.
- A small cupfulRead it loosely as a scant to level cup of crumbs, somewhere between 3 and 4 oz if they are dry (less if soft and fresh), and adjust to the wetness of the beef.
- The fryingTwo minutes only makes sense for small balls, no bigger than a walnut, in hot deep fat (around 375F if you are measuring). Anything larger wants three to four minutes, or the outside colours before the middle is hot. Shallow frying in half an inch of oil works if you turn them.
- Two eggs, two jobsOne beaten egg goes into the mixture as a binder; the coating calls for more egg, so beat a second one for dipping. Bread the balls after chilling, not before.
- YieldOne cup of chopped beef makes about ten small balls, enough for two people as a main course with a sauce or gravy, or four as a first course.
- SeasoningCold roast beef is bland and the crumbs dilute it further. Season the mixture assertively and taste a pinch of it, fried, before shaping the rest.
Dishes like this belong to the nineteenth-century tradition of réchauffé cookery -- meat served hot a second time -- which filled whole chapters of household manuals at a time when a Sunday joint was expected to feed a family for several days. The Worcestershire sauce is the period's fingerprint: bottled sauces were a common remedy for the flatness of yesterday's beef. The technique itself is older and wider than any one cuisine, being essentially the same logic as a croquette or a rissole: bind chopped cooked meat with crumbs and egg, chill it so it holds, then give it a fried crust to make it taste new.