Mince

Ingredients

• Choose your meat, whatever it may be
• a fifth of the quantity of meat, of sausage meat
• half as much breadcrumbs as you have sausage meat
• a teaspoonful of fine flour
• a finely chopped shallot or a small onion
• from half a gill of good stock upwards
• a tiny squeeze of lemon juice

Method

1. 1

   Chop the meat finely, add sausage meat and breadcrumbs, season with salt, pepper, and parsley.

2. 2

   Brown shallot in butter, add meat mixture, sprinkle with flour, and stir for 5 minutes.

3. 3

   Add stock and cook gently for 30 minutes, then add lemon juice and serve garnished with fried croutons.

Nutrition per serving

As published

This recipe was extracted from The "Queen" cookery books: Entrees (1901) by S. Beaty-Pownall, page 57. The excerpt below is the record exactly as published.

mince, like our own hash produced from slices of beef or other meat, but in this case the meat in question is actually allowed to simmer steadily but gently for an hour exactly. It certainly is a delicious dish as anyone who tries the emince de bceuf aux tomates given further on will readily admit, but its chr'ef merit depends on the exact obedience paid to the cooking time, one hour, neither more nor less. Then again there is the gratin ; this derives its name from the fact that the ingredients at the bottom of the pan, and on its 118 ENTRIES. surface, are gratines, or browned and caught by the beat of the disb in which they are cooked. For this purpose you require a fireproof china dish of nice appearance as it must come to the table ; the white Limoges fireproof china is about the nicest, but there are also very pretty royal blue, and rich dark green dishes now to be had, that are well worth looking at. (Of course if preferred a silver dish may be used, but in this case be very particular to stand this on a folded sheet of kitchen paper, in a baking tin with boiling water about one-third the height of the inner silver dish, all round it, or else the latter will infallibly be burned, if not altogether spoiled. This hint may be well observed by cooks anxious to reheat any little plat without turning it out of its dish, but never forget the doubled sheet of paper as this absorbs the moisture and prevents the bottom of the silver dish from catching, as it infallibly would do, even if its sides were protected by the outside water). Having chosen your dish, in shape and size according to what you intend to use it for, strew the bottom with a fairly generous layer of freshly made sifted white breadcrumbs, finely minced parsley, mushrooms, shalot, young spring onions or chives (according to what you have), and either grated fat bacon or tiny morsels of clarified dripping or butter, according to the gratin you are making ; these ingredients should properly be well mixed first, and then spread at the bottom of the dish ; season with pepper and salt, then lay in your meat, and cover it with another layer of bread- crumbs, &c. , putting on this some more tiny bits of RECHAUFFES. 119 dripping or butter ; then pour over it a wineglassful of light French wine and the same of good clear stock, and bake in a quick oven from ten to fifteen minutes, watching it closely, and adding a very little more stock should it show signs of drying up too much. This is the general rule for preparing a gratin of any kind, but it is naturally subject to- variations according to the foundation meat; for instance if you intend to gratiner beef or mutton, alternate the meat slices with sliced tomato or par- boiled Spanish onions ; if veal or lamb, or chicken is used, employ sliced cucumber, artichoke bottoms, or mushrooms, whilst for veal or chicken some thinly sliced ham or tongue will also be found an addition ; many people also approve of the addition of finely grated Parmesan cheese to the breadcrumbs and it undoubtedly adds a flavour ; then others use red wine such as claret or Burgundy and brown stock for brown meat, leaving the white wine and the white stock for the more delicate meats, in short like most other rechauffes the gratin may be varied to suit individual tastes. Next comes the familiar (far too familiar) mince, almost as great a trial as hash, yet, like it, capable of all sorts of dainty developments, if we will accept the French hachis for our English mince. (By the bye, how few people seem to realise that the Scotch “ haggis ” is only a form of the French “ hachis.”) To begin with, please remember that for a mince deserving the name, the mincer must be taboo, unless its knives are kept in such a delicate condition of cleanliness and sharpness as to ensure the meat 120 ENTRIES. being really minced (hackee, or chopped), and not torn and reduced to a stringy pulp, as is all but invariably the case if entrusted to the ordinary cook’s mincing machine. Choose your meat, what- ever it may be, and remember, if thriftily inclined, that the more kinds of meat used the merrier. Remove all skin, sinew, gristle, and a good deal of the fat, and chop it up as finely as possible with a sharp chopping knife ; add to it a fifth of the quantity of meat, of sausage meat, and half as much breadcrumbs as you have sausage meat, seasoning it with pepper, salt, and a little parsley. Now put into a pan a nice piece of butter, according to the amount of meat you have, and, as soon as this melts, lay in a finely chopped shallot or a small onion, and let it brown delicately, keeping it stirred in the process. (Be careful your pan does not rest flat on the coals, or its contents will certainly catch.) Then turn into it the meat, &c., sprinkle it with a teaspoonful of fine flour, and keep it well stirred over the fire for five minutes, at all events (more if you have a rather large quantity of meat), then pour into it from half a gill of good stock upwards, according to quantity, and let it cook very gently over a slow fire for half an hour, when you add a tiny squeeze of* lemon juic

Cook this with the app: pantry check, scaling, and the assistant.