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Bitokes, Moscovitte
Hash three sound, peeled, shallots exceedingly fine, with a clove of garlic. Place in a small saucepan with one tablespoon butter, fry till a nice golden colour, add two tablespoons flour, mix well; pour in one gill white broth); add one tablespoon grated nutmeg and the rind of quarter of a sound lemon, finely chopped, and thickened with two egg yolks: mix while cooking for five minutes. Add three-quarters of a pound cooked beef, cut into small dice pieces, two ounces lean cooked ham, cut the same way, six finely chopped mushrooms and one teaspoon freshly chopped parsley. Season with a teaspoon salt and two saltspoons cayenne pepper. Mix all well while cooking for two minutes more. Transfer the preparation to a cold dish and let thoroughly cool off. Divide the force into twelve even parts. Give them nice cutlet-like shape, Hamburg steak, or any desired form. Dip in beaten egg, roll in fresh bread crumbs. Heat in a frying pan two tablespoons melted lard, arrange the bitokes in the pan and fry for six minutes on each side, or till of a nice golden colour. Remove, pour a poivrade sauce on a dish, arrange the bitokes over and serve.
This is a bound croquette mixture rather than a ground-meat patty: a thick, egg-enriched veloute carries diced cooked beef and ham, is chilled solid, shaped, breaded and fried. Two of the quantities as printed need judgment before you start.
- A gill of brothA gill is half a cup (4 fl oz). "White broth" means a pale unroasted stock — veal or chicken. With 2 tablespoons flour and two yolks this gives a paste stiff enough to set firm when cold, which is the point.
- The nutmeg is almost certainly a misprintA tablespoon of grated nutmeg in a half-cup sauce would be inedible and unpleasantly strong. Read it as a teaspoon at most; a quarter teaspoon suits the amount of meat here.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is about a quarter teaspoon, so two saltspoons of cayenne is roughly half a teaspoon — assertive but plausible for a period recipe. Start with a quarter if you are unsure.
- The yolks must not boilThe instruction to "mix while cooking for five minutes" after the yolks go in will scramble them over direct heat. Beat the yolks with a spoonful of the hot sauce first, return them off the heat, then cook gently below a simmer until it thickens.
- Chill properly"Thoroughly cool off" means spread the mixture no more than an inch deep and refrigerate until cold and firm, at least two hours. Warm force will not hold a cutlet shape and will burst in the fat.
- Frying timeSix minutes a side is too long — everything inside is already cooked and the crumb will darken past golden. Two to three minutes a side in shallow fat at about 350F is enough to crisp and heat through. Lard fries well but any neutral fat works.
- Poivrade sauceA brown sauce sharpened with crushed peppercorns, vinegar or wine, and mirepoix, strained. If you are not making one, a well-reduced pepper-and-vinegar pan sauce is closer to the intent than anything creamy.
- YieldTwelve small cutlets from about a pound of meat: four servings as a main course, six as a first course.
Bitok (plural bitki) is the Russian word for a small beaten or pounded meat cake, and the dishes labelled a la moscovite in Western cookbooks of the late nineteenth century were part of a broad fashion for Russian dining that also gave the trade service a la russe, charlotte russe and salad Russe. In the Franco-Russian kitchen of that period a bitok was usually chopped raw beef bound with bread and cream; what appears here is the thriftier hotel version, in which yesterday's boiled beef and a scrap of ham are diced and set in a thick veloute so they can be breaded and fried — the same principle as a croquette, given a cutlet's outline. It says a good deal about how national dishes reached readers in this period: filtered through professional French technique, renamed in French, and adapted to use up cooked meat that a large kitchen always had on hand.