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Podovies, or Beef Patties
775. Shred underdone dressed beef with a little fat, seasoned with pepper, salt, and a little shalot or onion. Make a plain paste, roll it thin, and cut it in shape like an apple-puff, fill it with the mince, pinch the edges, and fry them of a nice brown. The paste should be made with a small quantity of butter, egg, and milk,
A leftovers dish: cold roast beef, chopped and seasoned, sealed in a thin fried pastry. The success of it rests entirely on the beef being rare to begin with.
- "Underdone dressed beef""Dressed" means cooked, and "underdone" means rare. Well-done roast beef reheated inside pastry turns dry and stringy, so use trimmings from a rare joint, or cook a piece deliberately rare for the purpose.
- Shred, not minceShred -- in nineteenth-century usage "shred" generally means cut small with a knife, and the recipe itself goes on to call the filling "the mince", so the two words are not opposed here. A food processor reduces cold beef to paste; pulse only if you must, or chop by hand for texture.
- ShalotAn older spelling of shallot. One small shallot or a tablespoon of grated onion is enough for a cupful of beef; raw onion in a quick-fried pastry stays sharp, so keep it finely minced.
- "A little fat"No quantity is given. Chopped beef suet or the soft fat from the joint, a small proportion to the lean, will help keep the mince from drying in the pan.
- The pasteNo quantities are given. A workable version is 8 oz flour, 2 oz butter, one egg and enough milk to bind a firm, rollable dough. It is a fry pastry rather than a puff, so it should be short but strong enough to hold a seam.
- Shaping"shape like an apple-puff" most often means a round or square of pastry folded over the filling into a half-moon or turnover. Roll thin, about the thickness of a coin, and press the edges firmly; a damp finger along the rim seals better than pinching alone.
- FryingShallow or deep fry at 350-360F. The filling is already cooked, so you are only browning the crust and heating through, about three to four minutes. Hotter fat colours the pastry before the centre warms.
- YieldA batch of this size makes about eight patties, enough for four as a light dish with a salad or a sharp sauce.
The name is usually taken to point eastwards: podovies is generally explained as an anglicisation of a Russian term for filled pastries -- the form podovyi pirog, a pie baked on the hearth, is one suggested source -- though the derivation is traditional rather than firmly documented, and a straight equation with pirogi overstates it. Whatever its origin, by the time it appears here the dish sits with the other economical fried patties made from cold roast beef, a category Victorian household books carry in quantity: a joint was cooked large, served hot once, and then reappeared shredded, potted or fried until it was gone.