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Minced Beef or Mutton
531. Make a gravy according to par. 282; thicken it with flour or arrowroot, which is still better), then add to it the minced-up beef and warm it. In warming up any meats in this way, they should be done in a stewpan on a hot-plate, or in a water-bath, commonly called a bain-marie, as it is owing to boiling hashes or minces that they get hard. All sorts of stews, or meat dressed a second time, should be only gently simmered, and that for a short time only, so as to be just warmed through. After mincing the beef with some of the fat, season it and add boiled carrots, with a little onion or shalot chopped fine. Have a small hot dish with sippets of bread ready, and pour the mince into it, but first mix a large spoonful of vinegar with it; if shalot vinegar is used as a seasoning, there will be no need or the onion or the raw shalot. onion or the raw shalot.
A Victorian way of using up cold roast beef or mutton, built on the principle that reheated meat must never boil. The instructions are sound; only the vocabulary and the cross-reference need translating.
- The hinge: never let it boilAlready-cooked meat toughens the moment it simmers hard. Keep the gravy at 160-170F, stir the meat in off the heat if necessary, and serve as soon as it is hot through.
- The gravy referencePar. 282 is the book's own gravy recipe. Thicken it with flour or, as the text prefers, arrowroot, which stays clear and does not go pasty on standing.
- Bain-marieA water bath: set the pan of mince in a wider pan of hot water on low heat. A double boiler does the same job, and so does the lowest setting on an induction hob if you watch it.
- Hot-plateIn a Victorian kitchen this was the iron plate of the range top. Here read it as very low, steady heat.
- MincingChop by hand or pulse briefly in a processor. Old cold roast reduced to a paste in a machine turns gluey; you want pieces the size of a pea. Including some of the fat, as directed, is what keeps the dish from tasting dry.
- Shalot vinegarShallots steeped in vinegar for a week or two, once a standard cruet item. Cider or white wine vinegar with a finely chopped shallot left in it overnight is a close stand-in; use about a tablespoon for a pound of meat, added at the last moment so the acid does not dull.
- SippetsSmall triangles or fingers of bread, fried in dripping or toasted, arranged round the edge of the dish. They go on the hot dish first so the mince is poured over and among them.
- YieldA pound of cooked meat with its gravy and carrots serves three or four with potatoes or a poached egg on top.
Mince of this kind was a common way of using up a large Sunday joint, and cookery books of the mid-nineteenth century treat re-dressed meat as a serious branch of the art rather than an afterthought — whole chapters are given to hashes, minces and rissoles. The insistence on the bain-marie is a mark of French professional practice filtering into English domestic kitchens.