Minced Beef
Chop beef from the rump or round into small pieces and stew in a little water or milk, seasoning with butter, salt and pepper when the meat is first put in the pan. Serve on buttered toast. The remains of roast beef may also be prepared in this way.
A frugal skillet dish with almost no measurements given, so the cook is expected to judge by eye. The important variable is how much liquid you add and how long you let it go.
- "Minced" means hand-choppedIn this period mincing was generally done with a knife or a hand-cranked mincer, giving irregular pieces rather than a uniform grind. Chopping rump or round by hand, or pulsing cubes briefly in a food processor, gives a better texture here than packaged ground beef.
- Cut and quantityRump or round is lean and needs the moist stewing the recipe calls for. The recipe gives no amounts; for 1 lb of meat, roughly 2 tablespoons butter and a modest splash of water or milk -- start with less than 1/2 cup and add more if it dries -- will feed three or four over toast.
- Milk versus waterMilk makes a pale, slightly thickened gravy that clings to the toast; water makes a clear, beefier one. If you use milk, keep the heat low, since a hard boil can make it separate.
- Season at the start, as writtenThe recipe has the salt, pepper and butter go in when the meat first hits the pan. Salting early draws out juice, which in a dish with no stock in it is most of what becomes the sauce.
- TimingFresh chopped round wants 15 to 20 minutes at a bare simmer, covered, until the pieces are tender and the liquid has reduced to a light gravy. Cooked roast beef, the second option given, needs only about 5 minutes to heat through; longer and leftover beef goes stringy and dry.
- Thickening, if you want itThe original leaves the liquid thin. A teaspoon of flour rubbed into the butter before the meat goes in will bind it enough to sit on toast without soaking through.
- The toastCut it thick and butter it hot so it holds up under the gravy. Toast points or a split biscuit both work; a soft sandwich slice collapses.
Dishes of chopped beef stewed briefly and heaped on toast run right through nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American and British cookery, under names like minced beef, minced collops and beef on toast, and they exist for a practical reason: the household had a Sunday roast and needed Monday's dinner out of it. Note that this recipe gives the fresh-meat version first and the leftover version as an afterthought. The word "mince" itself comes through Old French from Latin, from the root meaning small, and in British usage it still means ground meat rather than the dish made from it.