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Bubble and Squeak
Cut up leftover beef and fry in beef dripping. Chop a small cabbage, parboil it, drain, add to frying beef, and let simmer until cabbage is done. Finish with seasoning and a dash of vinegar.
Because it's made of leftovers, this is what the English call "a twice-laid dish."
A skillet dish built from Sunday's roast, and it works best when the pan is hot enough to let things brown rather than steam.
- Beef drippingThe fat skimmed and set from roasting beef, sold in tubs in Britain and easy to save at home. Bacon fat, lard or a neutral oil with a spoon of butter all stand in; the dripping is what gives the traditional flavour.
- Parboil brieflyTwo to three minutes in boiling water is enough for chopped cabbage; the recipe then has it simmer with the beef until tender. Drain it well and press out the water so the pan does not flood.
- Leftover beefAlready-cooked meat only needs heating through. Cut it in small pieces; the recipe starts it in the dripping, so keep that stage short, since long frying turns roast beef dry and stringy.
- SeasoningPlenty of black pepper and salt, since the cabbage soaks it up. The recipe calls only for a dash of vinegar; malt is the usual English choice, and adding it off the heat keeps it from cooking away.
- PotatoMost modern versions include leftover mashed or boiled potato, which binds the mixture and browns well. This version omits it, so the result is looser than the potato cake many readers expect.
- YieldA small cabbage and the meat off a roast serve three or four as a main dish, more alongside eggs.
Bubble and squeak is traditionally said to be named for the sounds of the pan -- the bubbling of the boiled vegetables and the squeak of them frying -- though this is a popular explanation rather than a documented one. The name is recorded in English from the late eighteenth century, and early nineteenth-century cookery books give it as slices of cold boiled beef fried with cabbage, much as here; the potato-heavy version familiar today became standard later. 'Twice-laid' is an old term for a dish made up from food already cooked once, most often used of leftover fish and potato. It belongs to a whole family of thrift cookery from the era of the weekly joint, when a large roast on Sunday was expected to reappear in some altered form for days afterward.