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Pressed Beef in Aspic Jelly
1. Cut the handsomest streaked rolls of cooked corned beef in slices, lay them on large platters, pour over enough clear melted aspic jelly to cover. When cold and set cut out the slices of beef and jelly with a tin cutter, place on the dish they are to be served in and garnish with parsley, pickles and beets. 2. Cut the cooked corned beef into dice quite small, simmer for an hour or two more in broth or stock strong enough to become jelly when cold. Then dip the meat into bright gem pans of some ornamental shape, in which you have first strewn some leaves of parsley. Set away to get cold, without pressure. When set firm take these individual pains de baeuf from the moulds. Put at the bottom of each mould a slice of a pickle stamped in star shape and then return the cakes of beef to their places. Pour jelly in the thin space between the meat and the mould. Dish bottom side up and decorate. "Cut and come again," it seems, has always been the motto of the English and Irish hunting squires when setting their boiled rounds of beef on the table--a free lunch for everybody.
Two treatments of the same leftover: cold corned beef set in savoury jelly, either as stamped medallions or as little moulded loaves. Nothing here is difficult, but the jelly does all the work and the book assumes you already know how to make it.
- Aspic jelly, unexplainedThe recipe takes for granted a clear, well-seasoned meat jelly of the kind kept ready in a well-stocked larder. Modern equivalent: strong beef or veal stock, clarified with egg white and shell, seasoned and sharpened with a little vinegar or sherry, and set with about 1 oz (roughly 4 envelopes) of powdered gelatine per quart if the stock does not gel on its own. It should be firm enough to cut cleanly, not rubbery.
- Gem pansNineteenth-century gem pans are muffin-style baking pans with round or oval cups, commonly cast iron but also made in bright tinned metal; the recipe's "bright gem pans" suggests the latter. A standard muffin tin, dariole moulds or small ramekins all work; anything with sloping sides releases more easily.
- Pains de bœufThe phrase means "beef loaves" -- individual moulded portions, not anything baked as bread. The printed page was checked and the spelling stands as our text now gives it.
- Simmering the diced beefThe hour or two of further simmering in stock is there to enrich the liquid and soften already-firm corned beef, not to cook it. Corned beef that is already tender will shred if pushed that long; 30–40 minutes at a bare simmer is usually enough, and reduce the stock separately if it needs strengthening.
- "Set away to get cold"Written for a cold larder. Chill in the refrigerator instead, and do not leave moulded meat and jelly standing at room temperature to set — aspic on cooked meat is exactly the sort of thing that should go straight into the cold. Allow 4 hours, or overnight for the larger platters.
- UnmouldingDip the mould to its rim in hot water for five to ten seconds, no longer, then invert. The instruction to "dish bottom side up" means the parsley strewn in at the start, and the pickle star laid in the bottom of the mould afterwards, both end up decorating the top.
- Stamping the slicesFor the first method, keep the jelly layer no deeper than needed to cover the slices, or the cutter will not go through cleanly. Chill the platter until the jelly is fully firm before cutting, and warm the cutter briefly between cuts.
- YieldThe book gives none. A quart of aspic and about 1½ lb of cooked corned beef will fill twelve muffin-tin moulds, enough for a cold buffet of six to eight.
Aspic work of this kind was the pastry cook's and the caterer's stock in trade at the turn of the twentieth century, when a cold table was judged largely on how clear the jelly was and how neatly the garnish was set into it. Corned beef — beef cured in coarse "corns" of salt, the name having nothing to do with maize — was the cheap, keepable meat that made such a display affordable, and recipes like this one exist mainly to turn the remains of a boiled round into something that could be sent back to the table looking deliberate. The closing remark about "cut and come again" nods to the older English and Irish custom of leaving a whole boiled round of beef standing on the sideboard for anyone who called.