Veal Olives
Cut up a slice of a fillet of veal, about half an inch thick, into squares of three inches. Mix up a little salt pork chopped with bread crumbs, one onion, pepper, salt, sweet marjoram and cloves, with a well beaten egg; put this mixture upon the pieces of veal, fasten the four corners together with skewers; lay them in the pan with veal gravy or light stock enough to cover bottom of pan; dredge with flour, and when well browned on top, drop a bit of butter on each, and let them remain about twenty-five minutes, at which time they will be nice and tender. Serve with horseradish.
A straightforward stuffed-and-rolled veal dish written for a cook who already knew what "olives" meant. The quantities are left to judgement, and the cooking method is implied rather than stated.
- The hinge: thin, even meatHalf an inch is thicker than is easy to fold into a parcel. Cut the fillet (top round or leg cutlets) thinner and pound the three-inch squares to an even thinness between sheets of plastic; they will then close over the stuffing more readily and stay closed.
- SkewersSmall metal skewers were standard kitchen kit. Wooden toothpicks or a turn of butcher's twine do the same job; remove them before serving, and count them out so none reach the plate.
- Quantities for the stuffingNone are given. For eight squares, roughly 3 oz salt pork finely chopped, 1 cup fresh breadcrumbs, one small onion minced and softened, one egg, a teaspoon of marjoram, and cloves measured in pinches — ground cloves dominate quickly and a scant eighth of a teaspoon is enough.
- Salt porkCured fatty pork belly, the fat carrier of the stuffing. Blanch it briefly if it is very salty, and go easy on the added salt; unsmoked bacon or pancetta is the nearest substitute.
- Which pan, which heatThe instruction to brown the tops suggests oven cooking rather than a burner, though the book does not say so. A moderate oven (around 375F) in a shallow uncovered pan with stock a half inch deep would suit the description; on the stovetop you would need to cover and turn them.
- Twenty-five minutesReasonable for thin rolls this size, but check rather than trust the clock. Whole-muscle veal is done at 145F internal with a rest and dries out fast past that; because the stuffing contains raw egg and chopped pork, take the centre of the stuffing to 165F.
- Veal gravy or light stock"Veal gravy" here means unthickened veal cooking liquor, not a thickened sauce. Any light unsalted stock works. The flour dredge plus the pan liquid gives you a thin sauce to spoon over at the end.
- Yield and servingYield depends on the size of the slice; count two olives per person. Horseradish means grated fresh root or a plain prepared horseradish, served alongside; creamed horseradish sauce suits the richness.
"Olive" here probably has nothing to do with the fruit, though the derivation is not settled. One account traces the name to the Middle English alows or aloes, from Old French aloe, lark — small rolled parcels of meat said to resemble trussed birds, a sense preserved in the French alouettes sans têtes, larks without heads; another takes it simply from the olive-like shape of the roll. English cookery books carried beef olives and veal olives from the seventeenth century onward, and by the time this book appeared the form had become a standard way to stretch a modest cut with bread, onion and a little cured pork. Veal was cheap and common in American kitchens of the period in a way it no longer is, and the seasoning — sweet marjoram and cloves, sharpened at the table with horseradish — is characteristic of a nineteenth-century palate that still reached for warm spice in savoury meat dishes.