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Spiced Pressed Beef
Take a shin bone and a pound or two of other good stewing piece, the lower round or rump will do. Have about 3 pounds of meat in all. Wash and wipe off the outside and trim away any poor pieces of fat or dried edges of the meat. Crack the bone as for soup. Cut in pieces that will pack closely in the kettle with the bone. Cover with cold water, and bring at once to a boil. Add salt and pepper, a finely chopped onion, and a tablespoonful of vinegar, and simmer slowly until the meat falls to pieces. The liquor should then be reduced to about one-half.
Take out the meat and pick into rather small pieces with a fork. Strain the liquor, add 1/2 teaspoonful each of ground cloves, allspice, and mace, a little mustard and cayenne, and, if liked, celery salt. Let this come to a boil and return the meat, stirring it well together with a fork. When it is thoroughly heated, turn out into an oval dish or mould, cover with a plate to press the meat well down, and put it away to cool. There should be liquor enough to make it quite moist, and when cold the liquor should be solid jelly. Cooked in this way it can be served cold in thin slices for lunch or Sunday supper, either with or without tomato sauce or mayonnaise dressing; it is delicious in sandwiches, or it can be cut in half-inch slices, crumbed, and sauted in butter.
For a change from sliced meat, mould it in custard cups or any small moulds. Keep them on the ice until just ready to serve; dip the cups in hot water for a moment and turn the meat out on a platter, and garnish with sprigs of parsley alternated with crisp, white celery tops, with sprigs of parsley stuck between the moulds.
Or for a piece de resistance for the Sunday evening supper, garnish with sauted hardboiled egs.
A jellied potted beef that sets by its own gelatin — no packet gelatin, no aspic. The whole thing depends on getting enough collagen out of the shin bone and reducing the liquor hard.
- The hinge: reduce far enoughThe liquor must be down to about half, thick and sticky, before the meat goes back in. If it is still thin the loaf will not slice — test by chilling a spoonful on a saucer; it should set firm within a few minutes.
- Meat and cutAsk for beef shin, sawn across, plus the pound or two of lower round or rump the recipe names. Shin is the collagen source; a butcher will usually crack the bone if asked, and "crack as for soup" means breaking it so the marrow and interior are open to the water.
- Simmering timeExpect 3 to 4 hours at a bare simmer for the meat to fall apart. A hard boil clouds the liquor and toughens the muscle fibers before the connective tissue gives way.
- Skim, and skim coldSkim the scum in the first fifteen minutes. Better still, chill the strained liquor and lift the fat cap off solid before reducing — a fat-streaked loaf turns greasy on the tongue.
- SpicingGround mace is the one item likely to be missing from a modern shelf; nutmeg comes from the same seed but is not a like-for-like swap, so buy mace if you can. "A little mustard" presumably means dry mustard powder. The recipe sets no amount for it or for the cayenne; roughly a half teaspoon of mustard and a quarter of cayenne is a starting guess, not the book's figure.
- Moulding and pressingA 1 to 1.5 quart loaf pan or terrine works. Cover with a plate cut to fit and weight it with a can or two; press while still warm or the meat will not knit.
- Chilling and keepingOvernight in the refrigerator at minimum. Eat within three or four days — the pressing and jelly are not a preservative, and this was written for a household with a working icebox.
- YieldAbout 3 pounds of raw meat gives roughly a 2 pound loaf, or 8 to 10 servings sliced thin for lunch.
- The sauté variantFor the half-inch slices crumbed and fried, cut them cold and straight from the refrigerator, or the jelly softens and the slice collapses in the pan.