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Horseradish Sauce
1/2 teaspoonful salt. Season two tablespoonfuls of grated horseradish with one-quarter teaspoonful each of salt and sugar, and one tablespoonful of vinegar. Whip one-quarter cup of thick cream stiff and add it to the horseradish. If there is no cream, a good sauce may be made by soaking an equal quantity of grated horseradish and soft white bread-crumbs with twice as much milk, until the mass is quite soft. Season with salt, sugar, and vinegar, and press through a fine wire sieve. The sauce should be of creamy thickness.
Roast Beef Sandwiches, Served Hot For four good-sized sandwiches make one cup of brown sauce (see page 68), adding to it. when cooked, one tablespoonful of finely minced sour pickle. Cut very thin as many slices of cold rare roast beef as needed. Cream two tablespoonfuls of butter and add to it one-quarter teaspoonful of made mustard. Spread the bread with this. Dip the slices of beef in the hot sauce and place them on the bread. Sprinkle with a very little chopped or crushed cold bacon before putting on the top slice of bread. Serve on a hot platter and pour the boiling sauce over all.
Rare Roast Beef in Savory Tomato Sauce Boil together for ten minutes 2 cups tomatoes 2 cloves 3 peppercorns Bit of bay leaf Sprig of parsley teaspoonful salt Strain. Melt two tablespoonfuls butter; when bubbling, add two tablespoonfuls flour and stir until blended. Gradually add the tomato, beating to avoid thickening unevenly. Let sauce boil up for one minute. Arrange the beef on a hot platter and pour the boiling sauce over it. One teaspoonful of chopped parsley may be added to the sauce just before taking up.
Beef Loaf (of Cold Beef) This is an acceptable way of using any of the small pieces of "well-done" roast beef, making an excellent luncheon or supper dish, especially in hot weather.
Soak one tablespoonful of gelatine in one-half cup of cold water ten minutes. Heat three-quarters of a cup of well-seasoned stewed tomatoes to boiling, and pour over the gelatine, stirring well until gelatine is dissolved. Have ready two cups of chopped and seasoned meat, mixed with one tablespoonful of lemon-juice and one small sour pickle minced fine. Stir the tomato into the meat mixture, and mold in an earthen dish. This amount will fill a quart dish half full.
Four short recipes for cold roast beef, running from a whipped horseradish cream to a molded gelatine loaf. Most of the translation needed is in the ingredient names.
- Horseradish, gratedThe book assumes a fresh root grated at the moment of use, which is far hotter and less acidic than the jarred product. If using prepared horseradish from a jar, drain it well and cut the vinegar back to a teaspoon or so, tasting as you go.
- Thick creamHeavy or whipping cream, the richest available (roughly 35% fat and up). Whip it just to stiff peaks and fold it into the seasoned horseradish rather than beating them together, or the acid and salt will slacken the foam. The sauce is best made shortly before serving.
- The bread-crumb versionA bread-thickened style of horseradish sauce long found in English cookery, using soaked crumbs in place of cream. Use soft crumbs from the interior of a white loaf, not dried crumbs, and let them soak until they collapse before sieving.
- Made mustardPrepared mustard, already mixed with liquid, as opposed to dry mustard powder. Any smooth Dijon or yellow mustard answers.
- Brown sauce, page 68A cross-reference to the book's own recipe, not reprinted here; such a sauce is normally a butter-and-flour roux browned and let down with beef stock. A cup of well-reduced beef gravy or a good demi-glace will stand in.
- Two cups tomatoesMost often canned tomatoes with their juice in books of this period, though fresh peeled tomatoes would serve in season; a 14-15 oz can is close enough. Straining after the ten-minute infusion removes the cloves, peppercorns and bay as well as the seeds and skins.
- GelatineOne tablespoon of granulated gelatine is roughly one 1/4-oz envelope. Bloom it in the cold water for the full ten minutes before adding the boiling tomato, and make sure no grains remain visible before the mixture meets the meat.
- Chilling the beef loafThe original says only to mold it. It needs at least four hours in the refrigerator to set, and because it is cooked meat bound in a moist, lightly acidic jelly it should be kept cold and eaten within two days. Unmold onto a cold plate.
- YieldsThe horseradish sauce makes something over half a cup once the cream is whipped, enough for four servings of beef. The recipe for hot sandwiches states four sandwiches; the loaf, as the book says, half-fills a quart mold, which is four modest luncheon portions.
Cookbooks of leftovers were a genre of their own in the early twentieth century, when a Sunday roast was expected to feed a household for days and wasting meat was a domestic failing rather than a budgeting choice. The horseradish sauce here is a standard accompaniment to roast beef in English and Anglo-American cooking, and the book gives two forms of it: the bread-crumb version, in which soaked crumbs supply the body, and the whipped-cream version. The molded beef loaf belongs to the same period's enthusiasm for gelatine, which became a cheap and dependable pantry staple after granulated gelatine came onto the American market in the late nineteenth century; a jellied loaf made cold odds and ends of well-done meat presentable in hot weather, which is precisely the reason the book gives.