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Cecils
Chop enough cold cooked beef or mutton to make a quart, add ne-half cup of dry bread crumbs, one tablespoon of chopped parsley, one teaspoon of Larkin Table Salt, one-eighth teaspoon of Larkin Black Pepper. Dissolve one-half teaspoon of Larkin Extract of Beef in one-half cup of boiling water, when thoroughly dissolved add to the meat and then the two well beaten eggs. Mold into small balls, egg and cracker and fry in hot fat. Serve with brown sauce. One can of salmon
A leftover-meat croquette, straightforward once two things in the text are decoded: the Larkin house-brand products and the stray line at the end.
- The trailing line is not part of this dishThe trailing line does not belong to this dish -- "One can of salmon" appears to be the opening of the following recipe, run on in the printing. Ignore it here.
- Larkin Extract of BeefA concentrated beef paste sold by the Larkin Company, equivalent to modern beef base or a bouillon concentrate. Use about half a teaspoon of paste base dissolved in half a cup of boiling water, or half a cup of strong beef stock reduced from a cup.
- How much meat a quart isA quart of finely chopped cooked beef or mutton is roughly 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 lb of meat off the bone. A food processor works, but pulse it; ground to paste, the balls turn dense and pasty.
- "Egg and cracker"Period shorthand for the standard breading sequence: roll each ball in beaten egg, then in fine cracker crumbs. Saltines or plain soda crackers crushed fine are the closest thing to the original crackers.
- Chill before fryingThe half cup of liquid makes a soft mixture. Refrigerate the shaped balls 30 minutes before breading so they hold their shape and do not shed crumbs in the fat.
- Fat temperatureThe book says only "hot fat"; modern practice for a cooked-meat croquette is around 365-375F. Any cooler and the balls absorb grease before the crust sets; the interior only needs heating through, a few minutes.
- Brown sauceIn books of this period this generally means a flour-and-drippings gravy browned well and thinned with stock. A standard espagnole or a simple roux gravy made with beef stock serves the same purpose.
- YieldRoughly two dozen or more balls the size of a walnut, enough for four to six as a main course with the sauce and a starch.
"Cecils" is an old British name for a fried ball or cake of chopped cooked meat, appearing in nineteenth-century English cookery books alongside rissoles and croquettes; the origin of the name is obscure and the usual explanations for it are guesswork rather than record. What matters more is where this version comes from: Good Things to Eat was issued by the Larkin Company of Buffalo, the mail-order soap-and-sundries firm whose premium catalogue system put its house brands into hundreds of thousands of American kitchens. Every branded ingredient here is a Larkin product, and the recipe's real job was to sell salt, pepper and beef extract. The dish itself reflects the older domestic economy the book inherited: cold roast beef or mutton from Sunday reappeared midweek, minced, bound with egg and crumbs, and dressed up with a brown sauce so nobody had to call it leftovers.