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Potted Beef

From A new system of domestic cookery (1807).

Source and licence

From A new system of domestic cookery (1807), printed page 35, digitised by the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/101239161.nlm.nih.gov

Read the original not stated by archive.org

What was changed: Read by machine from the book's scanned text into ingredients and method. The title's capitals were tidied; spelling and scanning errors are left as they are.

From an old book: a historical recipe, not current advice. Its methods, additives and storage may be unsafe by today's standards.

  • Preserving. Old preserving methods may not make food safe to keep. Use current tested guidance.
  • Curing. Old curing amounts and salts may be unsafe. Use current tested guidance.

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Ingredients

Method

  1. Take two pounds of lean beef, rub it with saltpetre, and let it lie one night ;
  2. then salt with common salt, and cover it with water four days in a small pan.
  3. Dry it with a cloth, and season with pepper : lay it into as small a pan as will hold it ;
  4. cover it with coarse paste, and bake it five hours in a very cool oven.
  5. Put no liquor in.
  6. When cold, pick out the strings and fat ;
  7. beat the meat very fine with a quarter of a pound of fine butter just warm, but not oiled, and as much of the gravy as will make it into a paste.
  8. Put it into very small pots, and cover them with melted butter.
  9. Take beef that has been dressed, either boiled or roasted : beat it in a mortar with some pepper, salt, a few cloves, grated nutmeg, a little fine butter just warm.
  10. This eats as well, but the colour is not so fine.
  11. Hessian Soufi and Ragout.
  12. Clean the root of a tongue very nicely, and half an ox head, with salt and water, and soak them afterwards in plain water ;
  13. then stew them in five or six quarts of water till tolerably tender.
  14. Let the soup stand to be cold : take off the cake of fat, which will make good paste for hot meat pies, or serve to baste.
  15. Put to the soup a pint of split peas or a quart of whole, twelve carrots, six turnips, six potatoes, six large onions, a bunch of sweet herbs, and two heads of celery.
  16. Simmer them without the meat, till the vegetables are done enough to pulp with the peas through a sieve, when the soup will be ibout the consistence of cream.
  17. Season it with pepper, salt, mace, pimento, a clove or two, and a little Cayenne, all in the finest powder.
  18. If the peas are bad, the soup may not be thick enough ;
  19. then boil in it a slice of roll, and put through the colander ;
  20. or put a little rice flour, mixing it by degrees.