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Breslau of Beef
1 tablespoonful of parsley 1 pint of cold, chopped beef 1/2 pint of cream ½ pint of cream 1 gill of stock 2 tablespoonfuls of butter ½ cup of stale bread crumbs 1 teaspoonful of salt Yolks of three eggs 1/2 teaspoonful of pepper Beat the yolks and chop the parsley; then mix all the ingredients well together. Brush custard cups well with melted butter, press the breslau into them Partly fill a baking pan with boiling water, stand the cups in it and bake in a quick oven for thirty minutes. When done, turn them from the cups onto a heated dish, pour around Tomato Sauce, garnish with squares of toasted bread, and serve hot.
A moulded beef custard, essentially a timbale made from yesterday's roast. The measurements as printed are garbled in one place, so read the notes before shopping.
- The cream quantity is corruptThe ingredient column lists both "1/2 pint of cream" and "1½ pint of cream" — a typesetting duplication. A pint and a half would drown the mixture; 1/2 pint (1 cup) is the amount consistent with a pint of chopped meat, three yolks and 1½ cups of crumbs.
- GillA gill is half a cup, so the stock is 4 fl oz. Beef stock, unsalted or lightly salted, since the recipe already adds a full teaspoon of salt.
- "A quick oven" needs tempering hereA quick oven is roughly 400-425F, which is too fierce for an egg custard even in a water bath — the outside sets and weeps before the centre is warm. Bake at 325-350F and check at 30 minutes: the mixture should be just firm to the touch and read about 160F at the centre.
- The water bath is the hingeThe pan must be filled with water already boiling and the water should come halfway up the cups. If the bath cools or runs low the custard cooks unevenly and will not turn out cleanly.
- "A pint of cold, chopped beef"Volume, not weight: roughly 12 oz to 1 lb of cooked beef, chopped fine by hand or pulsed briefly. Leftover roast or braised beef works; do not use raw mince, which releases liquid and will not set with the custard.
- Stale bread crumbsSoft crumbs from day-old bread, not dry packaged crumbs, which absorb far more liquid. If you only have dry crumbs, use about half the volume.
- UnmouldingButter the cups heavily as directed, let them stand 5 minutes out of the bath, then run a thin knife around the edge before inverting. Straight from the oven they are too fragile to hold their shape.
- YieldFills six to eight 6 oz custard cups; serves four to six with the tomato sauce and toast points.
"Breslau" dishes appear in late nineteenth-century American and English cookbooks as a way of using cold cooked meat: the meat is chopped, bound with cream, crumbs and egg yolk, moulded and baked, then sauced. The name presumably refers to Breslau in Silesia, then in Prussia and now Wrocław in Poland, though no Silesian original has been traced and the connection may be no more than a fashionable label. A custard-bound timbale of this kind used up leftover cooked meat without long work at the range and could be served in small portions.