Beef, Minced
INGREDIENTS for dish for 2 or 3 persons.-1 lb. of rump-steak, salt and pepper to taste, 2 oz. of butter, 1 onion minced, 1/4 pint of water, 1 tablespoonful of Harvey's sauce, or lemon-juice, or mushroom ketchup, 1 small bunch of savoury herbs. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 6d. INGREDIENTS for dish for 2 or 3 persons.—1 lb. of rump-steak, salt and pepper to taste, 2 oz. of butter, 1 onion minced, 1/4 pint of water, 1 tablespoonful of Harvey's sauce, or lemon-juice, or mushroom ketchup, 1 small bunch of savoury herbs. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 6d.
Mince the beef and onion very small, and fry the latter in butter until of a pale brown. Put all the ingredients together in a stewpan, and boil gently for about 10 minutes; garnish with sippets of toasted bread, and serve very hot.
ΤΙΜΕ.-10 minutes.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A quick stewed mince rather than a slow-cooked one, and it depends entirely on the beef being cut fine enough to cook through in ten minutes. A few of the ingredients no longer exist under these names.
- Mince means choppedVictorian "minced beef" of this kind was rump steak chopped fine with a knife on a board, which gives a coarser, meatier texture than modern ground beef. Supermarket mince works, but choose coarse-ground and break it up in the pan; if you chop it yourself, aim for pieces the size of a grain of rice.
- A quarter pintAn imperial quarter pint is 5 fl oz, about 2/3 cup. It produces a loose, brothy sauce rather than a thick gravy — reduce it a little longer or stir in a teaspoon of flour with the onion if you want it to cling.
- Harvey's sauceA commercial anchovy-and-soy condiment sold throughout the nineteenth century and long discontinued. Worcestershire sauce is the closest survivor; the recipe's own alternatives of lemon juice or mushroom ketchup are both still practical.
- A small bunch of savoury herbsIn Beeton's usage this generally means a bundle of parsley and thyme, often with a bay leaf, tied so it can be lifted out before serving. Two or three sprigs of each is enough for a pound of beef.
- SippetsTriangles or narrow fingers of toasted bread, arranged round the edge of the dish. They are there to soak up the thin sauce, and dry toast holds up better than buttered.
- The ten minutesTimed for finely chopped raw steak, which cooks through almost at once. Ten minutes at a bare simmer is enough for finely minced beef; a much longer boil will squeeze it dry and tough, since there is little connective tissue here to soften.
- Browning the onion"Pale brown" is the instruction, not golden or caramelised — the onion is meant to season the butter without dominating a dish that has only ten minutes of cooking to balance itself.
- Yield and servingTwo to three as written, and it reads more like a supper dish than a dinner course. Mashed potato or plain rice will absorb the liquid better than the toast alone.
Minced beef dishes of this type appear often in the middle-class Victorian kitchen, and it is reasonable to suppose that speed was part of the appeal: the household that could not spare three hours for a braise could still put chopped rump steak on the table in ten minutes. Beeton prices this one at 1s 6d, which places it among the cheaper meat dishes in a book where a joint might run several shillings, and the note "seasonable at any time" marks it as one of the standbys that did not depend on a season or a market day. The garnish of sippets is older than the recipe bsops of bread set round a dish of gravy go back to medieval English service and the tablespoon of Harvey's sauce is a reminder of how heavily nineteenth-century British cooking leaned on bottled anchovy and soy condiments to give depth in a hurry.