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Coquilles of Beef with Curry
Pick off all the meat from the roast beef left over from yesterday and cut it into inch-square slices.
Slice to the same size two cold boiled potatoes, add to the beef and keep on a plate. Cut in halves one medium onion and one green pepper, place in a saucepan with half an ounce butter and fry five minutes, then add two ounces raw lean ham cut in quarter-inch square pieces, and half a peeled eggplant cut the same way; cook ten minutes, lightly stirring meanwhile, add the beef and potatoes, season with a teaspoon salt, a teaspoon curry powder and half teaspoon white pepper. Moisten with two gills demi-glace and two gills tomato sauce lightly mix, then cover pan and set in oven forty-five minutes. Remove. Mix on a plate half a tablespoon butter with a tablespoon flour and add little by little to the beef, lightly mixing meanwhile. Divide preparation into six table shells, dredge four tablespoons fresh bread crumbs over them, evenly divided, arrange on a roasting tin, set in oven for fifteen minutes, remove and serve.
A leftover-roast dish built up with ham, eggplant and curry powder, then baked in shells and browned. The measurements are Escoffier-era and a couple of the vessels no longer mean what they did.
- GillsA gill is half a cup, so two gills of demi-glace and two gills of tomato sauce means one cup of each, two cups of liquid in all.
- Table shells"Coquilles" were served in scallop shells or in metal shell-shaped dishes; capacities varied. Small gratin dishes or 6-oz ramekins are a reasonable stand-in.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. The 45-minute covered stage wants a moderate oven, about 350F; the final 15 minutes to set the crumbs is better at 425F, or under the broiler for two or three minutes.
- Demi-glaceA reduced brown veal stock, not a bouillon cube. Jarred demi-glace concentrate diluted to a pourable sauce works, or reduce a cup of good beef stock by half and thicken it very lightly.
- The onion and pepperThe onion and pepper go in as halves and the recipe never says to remove them, so they are presumably there for flavour as much as eating. Cut them into strips or dice if you would rather eat them; halves are awkward to divide among six shells.
- Beurre maniéThe butter-and-flour paste worked in at the end is a beurre manié. Add it in small pinches off the boil and let the sauce come back to a simmer for a minute or two to lose the raw flour taste.
- Curry powderA single teaspoon across a filling of this size is a light hand. Note that the curry goes in before the 45-minute bake, so it does get cooking time; bloom it in the butter with the onion if you want more from it, and taste before committing to more.
- YieldSix shells, which is six first courses or three modest main dishes. The recipe does not state how much beef; about a pound of cold roast is a reasonable starting quantity.
Coquilles are the shell-served gratins of French professional cookery, and their long life on hotel menus owed much to their usefulness: a coquille is where yesterday's roast, fish trimmings or poultry scraps could reappear looking deliberate. This one comes from the era when "curry" in a European kitchen meant a commercial curry powder used as a single seasoning note in a French sauce base, alongside demi-glace and tomato sauce, rather than an attempt at an Indian dish. The eggplant and green pepper place it in the internationalist mood of early twentieth-century American cookbooks, which treated a spoonful of curry powder as sufficient passport. The underlying method — cook, bind with beurre manié, portion into shells, crumb, brown — is standard restaurant practice of the period and works for almost any cooked meat.