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Beef Kidney, to Dress (A more simple method)
Cut the kidneys into thin slices, flour them, and fry of a nice brown.
When done, make a gravy in the pan by pouring away the fat, putting in a small piece of butter, pint of boiling water, pepper and salt, a dessertspoonful of lemonjuice, and a tablespoonful of mushroom ketchup. Let the gravy just boil up, pour over the kidney, and serve.
Beef, Minced. (Cold Meat Cookery.) INGREDIENTS.-1 oz. of butter, 1 small onion, 12 tablespoonfuls of gravy left from the meat, 1 tablespoonful of strong ale, 1 teaspoonful of flour, salt and pepper to taste, a few slices of lean roast beef. AVERAGE Cost, exclusive of the meat, 3d.
Put into a stewpan the butter with an onion chopped fine; add the gravy, ale, and a teaspoonful of flour to thicken; season with pepper and salt, and stir these ingredients over the fire until the onion is a rich brown. Cut (but do not chop) the meat very fine, add it to the gravy, stir till quite hot, and serve. Garnish with sippets of toasted bread. Be careful in not allow ing the gravy to boil after the meat is added, as it would render it hard and tough.
TIME.-About hour.
SEASONABLE at any time.
BEEF, MIROTON OF.
Two short entries run together here: fried beef kidney with a pan gravy, and a mince made from leftover roast beef. Both are quick-cooking dishes where the failure mode is overcooking, not undercooking.
- Missing fractionsSome vulgar fractions are still missing from this page: "pint of boiling water" in the kidney recipe is likely half a pint. The "12 tablespoonfuls of gravy" in the minced beef may also be a garbled fraction, though a quantity in that range is plausible for the dish. Treat both as approximate.
- Preparing the kidneyBeef kidney needs the hard white core and surrounding membrane cut away before slicing; the recipe assumes a cook who already knows this. Many cooks soak the slices in salted water or milk for an hour and pat dry, which softens the strong ammoniacal note beef kidney has and lamb kidney does not.
- The hinge: fry fastSliced kidney is done in two to three minutes a side over fairly high heat. Held longer it turns to rubber and no gravy will rescue it. Get it browned, lift it out, build the gravy in the empty pan, and return the meat only at the moment of serving.
- Mushroom ketchupNot tomato ketchup — a thin, dark, salty mushroom extract closer to Worcestershire sauce or a mushroom soy. It is still sold by specialist grocers; a tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce, or mushroom soy with a squeeze more lemon, gives the same savoury depth.
- Spoon sizesA Victorian dessertspoonful is about 2 teaspoons; a tablespoonful in British measure is 15 ml. The teaspoonful of flour in the mince is a thickener for a very small quantity of gravy, not a roux.
- Strong aleMeans a stronger, generally malty beer; a brown ale, mild or porter suits better than a modern IPA. One tablespoon is there mainly for colour and depth, so a very hoppy beer will dominate.
- Do not boil the minceThe warning at the end is the whole technique. Roast beef that has already been cooked once seizes and toughens if simmered. Bring the gravy to temperature first, then fold in the meat and heat it through only.
- Cut, not choppedShredding the beef with a knife into fine strips keeps the fibres intact; mincing or processing it turns the dish pasty. Sippets are small triangles or fingers of toast, arranged round the edge of the dish.
- YieldNo quantities are given for the kidney, so servings are guesswork; a beef kidney is large and will stretch to several portions as a breakfast or supper dish. The mince, as written, makes only a small quantity -- scale the gravy and ale with the meat.
Both entries belong to the frugal middle of Mrs Beeton's book rather than its dinner-party chapters: offal and "Cold Meat Cookery" were the sections a Victorian household actually used daily, since a joint was expected to reappear at two or three subsequent meals. Fried kidney was standard breakfast fare in the nineteenth-century English house, served on the sideboard alongside bacon, devilled bones and kedgeree, and the pan gravy sharpened with lemon juice and mushroom ketchup is the period's usual answer to a strongly flavoured meat. Mushroom ketchup itself predates tomato ketchup in Britain by generations o to to a thin fermented brine, and mushrooms were the common English base long before tomatoes took the name. The insistence on cutting rather than chopping the cold beef, and on never letting the gravy boil afterwards, marks the difference this book drew between a respectable made dish and the grey rehashes it was written to displace.