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Economical Boiled Beef
Unwrap the beef left over from yesterday and cut into quarter-inch slices, spread a very little French mustard on both sides of the slices, lightly dip in beaten egg, then roll in bread crumbs. Heat two tablespoons lard in frying pan, add the beef and fry for two minutes on each side. Lift up, pour a horseradish sauce on a hot dish, dress the beef over and serve.
A leftover-beef dish that works only if the slices are cut and cooked correctly — the meat is already done, so the pan is there to crisp the crumbs and nothing more.
- The hinge: two minutes means two minutesThe beef was fully cooked yesterday; frying past the point where the crumb coat is golden simply dries it out. Get the fat properly hot first so the crust sets fast, and pull the slices as soon as they colour.
- Cut cold, serve hotBoiled beef generally slices more cleanly when cold than when warm. Cut the quarter-inch slices straight from the cold joint, then let them sit out while you set up the egg and crumbs.
- Lard and quantityLard is the fat the recipe calls for; any neutral fat with a high smoke point does the same job. Two tablespoons is only a thin film in an average frying pan, so work in batches rather than crowding, and top up the fat between them.
- French mustardIn English-language cookbooks of this period the term usually means a smooth, mild prepared mustard of the Dijon type rather than sharp English mustard. "A very little" is right — a scrape on each side, since a thick layer will slide off under the crumbs.
- BreadcrumbsDry, fine crumbs from stale bread rather than the coarse panko sold today. Press them on firmly and let the coated slices rest a few minutes before frying so the coating adheres.
- Horseradish sauceNo recipe for it is given here; horseradish sauce of the period was usually grated horseradish in whipped or lightly thickened cream, sharpened with vinegar and seasoned. If you warm it, do so gently — it should not boil, as heat drives off the volatile compounds that make horseradish taste of anything.
- PlatingSauce on the dish first, beef laid over it. This keeps the crumb crust dry on top; spooning sauce over the slices softens them within a minute.
- YieldNo quantity is given because it depends on what is left. Reckon three or four slices per person as a light main course with potatoes or a salad.
Boiled beef — a large cut of brisket, silverside or shin simmered with root vegetables — was a fixture of middle-class European and American households, and it was cooked in a size that guaranteed leftovers. Recipes like this one belong to a whole genre of second-day cookery, the *réchauffé*, which nineteenth- and early twentieth-century cookbooks treated as a serious branch of the craft rather than an afterthought: the challenge was to make cold cooked meat look and taste like a dish in its own right, and the standard solutions were mincing it, saucing it, or as here, coating it and crisping it. The mustard-egg-crumb sequence is the same one used for veal cutlets. Horseradish, meanwhile, was a long-established companion to boiled beef in English and Anglo-American cookery, so its appearance here is entirely at home.