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Minced Turkey on Toast
Mince very finely the meat of the turkey left over from yesterday and keep it on a dish. Hash very finely six sound shallots and place them in a saucepan with one tablespoon melted butter, gently stirring with a wooden spoon while cooking for three minutes; then add two tablespoons flour; stir briskly, add two gills hot milk and one gill cream. Stir briskly for one minute, then add the turkey. Mix all well and cook for five minutes. Season with half teaspoon salt, one saltspoon cayenne pepper and a saltspoon grated nutmeg. Stir well again for a minute, then add one teaspoon chopped parsley, mixed with half clove finely hashed sound garlic. Mix well again and gently cook for eight minutes longer. Have six small, hot toasts on a hot dish. Divide the hash equally on the toasts and serve.
A leftover-turkey cream hash, built on a plain roux. The only technical risk is the sauce, which is thick to begin with and gets thicker over the thirteen minutes of cooking the recipe asks for.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so two gills hot milk is 1 cup and one gill cream is 1/2 cup. A saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon.
- CayenneA full 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne in a sauce this size is assertive by modern palates. Start with an eighth and adjust at the end.
- Keep the sauce looseTwo tablespoons flour to 1 1/2 cups liquid is on the thin side of a standard white sauce to begin with, but it will tighten over the final eight minutes. Hold back a splash of milk and stir it in near the end so the hash spoons rather than slices.
- Cook the roux, then the shallotsCook the shallots, then the roux -- Three minutes in butter softens six shallots only if they are minced very finely and the heat is low. Let the flour cook a full minute before the milk goes in or the sauce tastes pasty.
- Heat, not simmerOnce the turkey is in, keep the pan at a bare tremble over low heat and stir often. Already-cooked breast meat dries out and shreds if it is boiled, and a flour sauce scorches on the bottom readily.
- Garlic and parsley go in lateHalf a clove sounds timid, but it goes in with eight minutes of cooking left rather than at the start, so it keeps some bite. Add the parsley at the same time so it keeps its colour.
- YieldSix small toasts, so three to six servings depending on whether this is lunch or a savoury course. Use firm white bread, toasted dry and kept warm; soft bread collapses under a cream hash.
Filippini's International Cook Book came out of the Delmonico's kitchens in New York, and this is a restaurant cook writing for the household: nothing about it is grand, but it assumes shallots, cream and a wooden spoon are all to hand. Creamed minced meat on toast was one of the great uses for the second and third day of a roast in the decades before home refrigeration made leftovers casual — the meat had to be used, and using it in a hot, well-seasoned sauce disguised both dryness and the fact that it was yesterday's bird. The nutmeg is the older signature here, a holdover from the long English and French tradition of seasoning white sauces and forcemeats with sweet spice rather than pepper alone. Dishes of this shape spread widely enough on both sides of the Atlantic that the American Army version, chipped beef in cream sauce, later earned its own unprintable nickname.