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Minced Beef
Cut some slices of cold roast beef to a half inch in thickness, and cut these into strips of about an equal width, slicing up finely. Place in a stewpan a wineglassful of port wine, a shallot chopped fine, the shredded rind of half an orange, and a little grated nutmeg; season with salt and cayenne pepper, and allow it to simmer for four or five minutes. Then add a little brown sauce; mix the beef with this preparation, adding a few drops of lemon-juice, and boil the whole again. Place in the middle of a dish, place a few raspings of bread over it, place some three-cornered pieces of bread fried in butter around it, a poached egg on each, with scallops of tongue in between, then serve.
Minced Beef, Spanish Style Thin slices of cold meat should be cut into strips and then into dice; place in a saucepan, and brown in oil; add a few finely-chopped shallots, one onion, and a green pepper cut into pieces. After becoming well-browned, about five minutes, put in a pint of Spanish sauce, a little salt and a like amount of pepper. Cook again for fifteen minutes, serving with a teaspoonful of chopped parsley scattered over it.
Beef, Neapolitan Style Procure a fresh piece of silverside, about six or eight pounds in weight, and make two or three holes in it with a carving knife, and insert in each a strip of fat bacon, rolled in powdered sweet herbs and pepper. Tie up the meat with tape to keep it in shape. Then mince some fat bacon, adding a clove of garlic, an onion, some parsley, thyme and marjoram; when well mixed, put in a saucepan with the meat and stew, turning the meat frequently until it is well-browned on all sides; then moisten with plenty of tomato sauce diluted with a little stock, and pepper and salt to taste. Stew the meat slowly until done, then remove the tape, and serve with macaroni around the dish, dressed as follows: Boil it in water, and when soft, mix it with some of the meat, strained from all fat, adding plenty of grated Parmesan cheese. The macaroni should be mixed in a warmed tureen, but not over the fire.
Three related dishes for cold roast beef, plus a braised joint, written for a hotel kitchen that always had brown sauce and cooked tongue on hand. The hinge in all of them is that the beef is already cooked: it needs only to be heated through in the sauce, and anything longer than that turns it to string.
- WineglassfulIn a book of this period a wineglass is about 2 fl oz, so roughly a quarter cup of port. Not a modern 6 oz pour.
- Brown sauce and Spanish sauceBoth point to the same family: espagnole, a brown roux sauce built on veal or beef stock. A good reduced demi-glace, or a well-made pan gravy thickened with brown roux, stands in. The recipe leaves "a little" undefined and gives no weight for the beef, so the pint called for in the Spanish version may need reducing if you want a thick hash rather than a soupy one.
- "Boil the whole again"The beef is cold roast and fully cooked, so a hard boil will squeeze it dry; bringing it back to a bare simmer is the safer reading, though it departs from the literal instruction. In the Spanish version the beef is in the pan for the whole fifteen minutes as written; if you prefer, soften the peppers and onion first and fold the beef in near the end.
- RaspingsDried bread grated or pounded to crumbs, then usually toasted golden. Coarse dry breadcrumbs browned in a dry pan are the same thing.
- Scallops of tongueThin slices cut on the bias from cooked, pressed beef tongue, a standard hotel garnish and larder item. Available from good butchers and delis; if you skip it the dish loses only the garnish, not the sense.
- SilversideThe outside of the round, sold in the United States as bottom round or rump roast. Six to eight pounds needs three to four hours of slow, covered braising at a bare simmer, or 300F in the oven, until a fork turns easily in it.
- Tie up with tapeCotton tape was standard for holding a larded joint; butcher's twine does the same job. Remove before slicing, as instructed.
- The macaroniThe recipe is explicit that the mixing happens in a warmed tureen and not over the fire, using some of the cooking liquor strained free of fat. Off the heat the cheese is less likely to seize into strings, though the book gives no reason. Warm the bowl properly and work quickly.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantity of cold beef, so any figure is a guess; the two minced dishes will serve three or four as a lunch or supper course depending on how much roast you have left. The six-to-eight-pound joint will feed eight to ten with the macaroni.
Oscar Tschirky was never technically a chef at the Waldorf, he was the maître d'hôtel, but his 1896 collection reads like a working record of what the hotel's kitchens actually turned out, including the unglamorous business of using yesterday's roast. Minced beef of this kind is close kin to the hotel hash: cold meat cut by hand rather than ground, bound with the house brown sauce, and dressed up with fried bread croûtes, poached eggs and tongue so it can be sent to a paying table. The port, shallot, orange rind and nutmeg of the first version belong squarely to the English cookery of the previous century, while the "Spanish style" turns instead to oil, onion and green pepper. The Neapolitan joint is a straightforward stracotto: a large cut larded with herbed bacon, braised in tomato, with the strained cooking liquid serving a second time as the sauce for macaroni, in the manner often said to be typical of Southern Italian households making two courses from one pot.