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Forcemeat Balls for Mock-Turtle Soups
The delicate French preparation, Panada, will, if used in the composition of these balls, be found a great improvement. Prepare it thus. Soak the crumb of two or three rolls. Put it into a small saucepan by the side of the fire, with enough pale rich gravy to cover it. When sufficiently boiled, squeeze off the moisture, put the panada into an enamelled saucepan, and stir with a wooden spoon till dry; then mix with it the yolks of two unbeaten eggs, and let it cool for use. Pound in a mortar four ounces of veal, free from gristle, bone, and skin; add the panada to this, with three ounces of fresh butter. Season with nutmeg, mace, salt, and cayenne. If liked, a little lean ham and more seasoning may be used. Roll into balls, and boil before adding to the soup. Time, twelve minutes to boil.
A Victorian forcemeat built on a panada — bread cooked down in stock until it is a stiff paste — which keeps the balls tender rather than bready. The whole thing takes fifteen minutes in a food processor.
- What a panada isBread crumb simmered in stock and then dried out over heat into a thick paste, used as a binder for quenelles and forcemeats. It is doing the job a modern cook might give to a panade of milk-soaked bread, but drying it on the stove gives a much firmer, less watery mix.
- "The crumb of two or three rolls"Interior crumb only, crusts discarded, from soft white dinner rolls. Reckon on about 3-4 oz (85-115 g) of crumb; the exact amount matters less than the drying stage, which sets the final consistency.
- "Pale rich gravy"Not gravy in the sauceboat sense. This means an unbrowned, well-reduced veal or chicken stock. A good unsalted chicken stock, reduced a little, is the closest supermarket equivalent.
- Enamelled saucepanEnamel gives a non-reactive surface, which was the usual reason for preferring it to bare iron for pale mixtures. Any non-reactive pan — stainless or enamelled — does the same job.
- The mortarFour ounces of veal pounded to a smooth paste is several minutes of hard work by hand. A food processor does it in under a minute; keep the meat and butter cold and pulse rather than run it, or the butter will melt and the mix will split.
- SeasoningMace and nutmeg come from the same fruit but are not interchangeable in quantity — mace is sharper and more floral. Use a scant quarter-teaspoon of each ground, and cayenne on the tip of a knife. Salt generously: unseasoned forcemeat tastes of nothing once it is floating in soup.
- Egg yolksTwo raw yolks are stirred into the still-warm panada. Let the panada cool to hand-warm first or the yolks will scramble in streaks.
- Boiling and sizeRoll small balls, around three-quarters of an inch. The recipe's twelve minutes suits balls of about that size; a bare simmer rather than a rolling boil will help them hold together. Poaching in stock rather than water keeps the flavour in, then add them to the finished soup.
- YieldFour ounces of veal plus the panada gives roughly 30 to 36 small balls, enough to garnish six to eight bowls of soup. They freeze well raw on a tray.
Mock turtle soup was the great Victorian economy dish: a calf's head simmered until its gelatinous meat took on the texture of the green turtle that only the very rich could afford, seasoned heavily with herbs and Madeira to complete the disguise. Forcemeat balls were commonly said to stand in for the turtle's own fat and eggs, and their presence in the bowl was part of the illusion — the soup was expected to look like real turtle soup as well as taste like it. The panada technique here is borrowed openly from French practice, as the recipe itself says; panade and the quenelle mixtures built on it were established in professional kitchens by the mid-nineteenth century.