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a little gravy; put it into scallop-shells or saucers, making them three parts full, and fill them up with potatoes, mashed with a little cream; put a bit of butter on the top, and brown them in an oven, or before the fire, or with a salamander.
What survives here is the finishing method for a scalloped dish: a moistened minced filling capped with mashed potato and browned. The technique transfers to any cooked meat, poultry or fish you have on hand.
- Scallop-shells and saucersThese are individual gratin dishes, roughly half a cup to three-quarters of a cup each. Ovenproof ramekins, shallow cocottes or real scallop shells all work; anything that can take direct oven heat is fine.
- "Three parts full"Fill the filling to about three-quarters of the depth, leaving room for the potato lid. Overfilled dishes weep gravy over the rim as they heat.
- The salamanderA salamander was an iron plate on a handle, heated red in the fire and held over food to colour the top. The modern equivalent is the broiler element, or a blowtorch for a small number of dishes.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives no temperature or time, only "an oven," the fire, or a salamander. In a modern kitchen a hot oven, or a few minutes under a hot broiler with the dishes set close to the element, will do the job; the aim is colour, not further cooking.
- Gravy quantity"A little gravy" means just enough to bind the mince so it is moist but not soupy; a spoonful or two per small dish is enough. Too much and the potato slides off and the mixture boils over.
- The mashed potatoMash with cream while the potato is still hot and keep it stiff enough to hold a fork mark. A loose mash sinks into the filling instead of forming a crust.
- Serving temperatureCooked meat reheated in small dishes should reach steaming hot right through, not merely brown on top. If the filling is fridge-cold, give it longer in the oven before browning.
Scallop dishes of this kind were a common nineteenth-century British treatment of cooked meat left from a roast: the meat chopped fine, bound with a spoonful of gravy, banked with mashed potato and given a brown top. Real scallop shells were used, and china and metal imitations of them were also sold, giving leftovers the appearance of a made dish; cookery books of the period print numerous variations under "scalloped" for meat, poultry, oysters and salt fish. The salamander named at the end is a tool of hearth and early range cookery, when there was no convenient way to apply heat from above; the word survives in professional kitchens as the name for an overhead broiler.