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Mussaka of Beef, Oriental
Pick off all the meat from the roast beef left over from Monday night, cut into small dice pieces and keep on a plate. Remove the stems and cut in halves, lengthwise, three very small, fresh, sound eggplants. With the point of a small knife make a few incisions inside, without touching the skin, lay them on a tin and bake in the oven for thirty-five minutes. Remove, scoop out the meat without cutting the skin, and cut the scooped-out meat into small dice pieces. Heat one and a half tablespoons melted butter in a saucepan, add a finely chopped onion and a green pepper and brown for five minutes; add the cut eggplant and cook for six minutes, lightly mixing with a spoon occasionally. Add the beef with a pint broth, a teaspoon freshly chopped parsley, a chopped bean garlic, a teaspoon salt, half teaspoon pepper and half teaspoon curry powder; mix well and cook on the range for thirty minutes, stirring occasionally meanwhile. Add three tablespoons fresh bread crumbs and one egg yolk, mix well while cooking for three minutes, remove, divide the hash into six eggplant half shells, neatly smooth the surface with a knife and sprinkle a little bread crumbs over. Arrange them on a tin, place a few bits of butter over them, set in the oven to bake for fifteen minutes. Pour a gill of tomato sauce on a hot dish, arrange the eggplants over and serve.
A leftovers dish built on the Monday roast, written for a cook who already had beef, broth and tomato sauce on hand. The quantities are loose in places and the oven is never given a temperature.
- How much beefThe recipe assumes whatever came off a family roast. Aim for about 12 oz to 1 lb of cooked beef, diced small; much more and the filling will not fit six eggplant shells.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given anywhere. Bake the halved eggplants at 400F for the first 35 minutes, and finish the stuffed shells at the same heat for the final 15 minutes, until the crumb topping colours.
- A gillHalf a cup. That is the tomato sauce poured onto the serving dish as a bed, not a sauce for spooning over.
- "A chopped bean garlic"Filippini's phrase appears to mean a single clove. One clove for six shells is restrained; two or three suits modern palates.
- The pint of brothA full pint into a pan of diced eggplant and beef is a great deal of liquid, and the 30 minutes of simmering is there to drive it off. Keep the pan uncovered and do not add the crumbs until the mixture is thick enough to mound on a spoon, or the shells will weep in the oven.
- Scooping the shellsThe incisions are made before baking, inside and without piercing the skin, presumably to help the flesh cook through and loosen. Leave about a quarter inch of flesh on the shell when you scoop, otherwise the halves slump when refilled.
- The egg yolkMixed in while the pan cooks for three minutes, it helps bind the hash. Take the pan off the direct flame while mixing it in so the yolk sets smoothly rather than scrambling in threads.
- YieldSix filled halves; the recipe gives no serving count.
Alexander Filippini spent decades in the kitchens of Delmonico's in New York, and The International Cook Book (1906) was his attempt to gather several thousand recipes from what the period liked to call the world's cuisines. That expectation explains the opening line here: the book assumes Monday's roast will reappear on Tuesday, and a stuffed eggplant is a respectable way to do it. The dish itself is musakka, the layered or stuffed eggplant preparation found across the Ottoman world and generally traced through Arabic musaqqa'a, meaning something like "chilled" or "fed liquid"; Filippini's version keeps the eggplant shell and the meat but no white sauce, which is the Greek elaboration most Anglophone readers now expect. The teaspoon of curry powder and the label "Oriental" say more about American assumptions of the 1900s than about any Balkan or Levantine kitchen.