Dutch Toast

History

Dutch Toast is a way of using up cold meat. Whatever poultry or meat is left over is minced and seasoned high, mixed with any cold dressed vegetable and bound with one or more eggs, then simmered in a little gravy until hot and served on a square of toast with lemon juice squeezed over and white pepper shaken on top. It is a short receipt, and the whole of its logic is in that first line: the meat is already cooked, and this is what a careful kitchen did with it next.

The Jewish Manual of 1846 carries the receipt, its title page giving no author at all — only the words "Edited by a Lady." The book's remark about invalids belongs not to the meat version but to the vegetable one printed alongside it: cauliflower simmered in chicken broth, seasoned delicately and minced onto toast, which the book calls "a nutritive good luncheon for an invalid." That is the Victorian kitchen and the Victorian sickroom standing close together, where minced, egg-bound foods were prized for being easy to digest.

An earlier version of this note put those words in the wrong place, quoting them as a description of the meat dish and misquoting them besides. Three further claims it carried — that the dish is rooted in the frugal domesticity of the Low Countries, that this is the first Jewish cookbook in English, and that the book is the work of Lady Judith Cohen Montefiore — we learned from popular reference and food-writing sources, and we were unable to locate the evidence they rest on. Nothing in the book itself ties this receipt to the Low Countries beyond its name.

Ingredients

• cold poultry or meat
• cold dressed vegetable
• 1 egg
• gravy
• 1 square of toast
• lemon juice
• white pepper

Instructions

1. Take the remains of any cold poultry or meat, mince it, and season highly.
2. Add to it any cold dressed vegetable and mix it up with one or more eggs.
3. Let it simmer till hot in a little gravy.
4. Have ready a square of toast and serve it on that.
5. Squeeze over a little lemon-juice and sprinkle with white pepper.
6. Vegetables prepared in this way are excellent; cauliflower simmered in chicken broth, seasoned delicately and minced on toast, is a nutritive good luncheon for an invalid.