 Minced meat was a delicacy in medieval cuisine, red meat usually being restricted to the higher classes.Very little mincing was done by medieval butchers or recorded in the cookbooks of the time, perhaps because it was not part of the sausage-making processes that preserve meat.Russian ships brought recipes for steak tartare to the port of Hamburg during the 17th century, a time when the presence of Russian residents there was so great that it was nicknamed "the Russian port."