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Scalloped Beef
2 cups cold chopped beef 2 cups cooked tomatoes Salt and pepper 1 cup brown sauce 1 cup bread crumbs 2 tablespoons butter In a baking dish arrange alternate layers of beef and tomatoes, seasoning each and moistening the meat with brown sauce (or with a little melted butter and hot water if there has been no brown sauce left). Cover the top with bread crumbs and bits of butter; bake in a moderate oven for half an hour and serve. it begins to brown too quickly, cover with another pan. If
A leftover-roast dish that depends entirely on the quality of what you start with: dry, overcooked beef will stay dry, since half an hour in a moderate oven is a reheat, not a braise.
- Moderate ovenRoughly 350F by modern reckoning, though the term covered a range. The dish is already cooked through; the baking is to heat it and crisp the crumb top. Half an hour, as the recipe says, suits a shallow dish.
- Brown sauceEspagnole or, in a household of this period, simply the thickened pan gravy from the roast. About a cup of well-seasoned beef gravy does the job. The recipe's own fallback of melted butter and hot water is thin; stock is better if you have it.
- Cold chopped beefLeftover roast or braised beef, hand-chopped rather than ground, so it keeps some texture. Two cups is roughly 10 to 12 ounces. Trim hard edges and gristle before chopping.
- Cooked tomatoesCanned whole or diced tomatoes, drained of only the thinnest juice; a 14-15 oz can falls a little short of the two cups called for. Too much liquid and the crumb topping steams instead of browning.
- Bread crumbsDry crumbs, not fresh, and tossed with the butter rather than dotted with it if you want an even crust. Fresh crumbs go soggy against the tomato.
- Covering the topIf the crumbs begin to brown too quickly, cover with another pan. A sheet of foil does the same thing.
- SeasoningCold cooked beef and canned tomatoes both need more salt than you expect. Season each layer as instructed rather than salting the top only.
- YieldServes four as a main course with a starch and a green vegetable, or six as part of a larger meal.
Scalloped dishes are a long-standing device in the American household repertoire, the name generally traced to the scallop shells once used as individual baking vessels, later transferred to any dish of layered ingredients with a crumbed top. The recipe's assumption that there may or may not be brown sauce left over from an earlier meal is characteristic of the cookery it teaches: each dinner is understood to leave the raw material of the next.