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Galantine of Veal
Remove the bones from a breast of veal, and lay it flat on the table, skin downwards. Beat it well with a chopper, in order to make it roll more easily. Take the hard-boiled yolks of ten eggs, and pound them to a paste; mix with them one dessert-spoonful of salt, a tea-spoonful of pepper, a dessert-spoonful of chopped parsley, a dessert-spoonful of sweet herbs, powdered, a tea-spoonful of anchovy sauce, and half a salt-spoonful of pounded mace. Brush the veal over thickly with beaten egg, and spread the paste on evenly, and place over it strips of veal forcemeat (see FORCEMEAT OF VEAL), some hard-boiled eggs cut into thin slices, three or four truffles cleaned and sliced, a few mushrooms cut into small pieces, and a pound of lean ham. Arrange these prettily on the meat, so that they will look well when the galantine is cut. Season rather highly, and roll the veal as tightly as possible, binding it with tape. Sew it in a cloth and put it into a saucepan, with some good veal stock, the bones, a carrot, a large onion stuck with two cloves, a bunch of sweet herbs, and a little salt and pepper. Let it simmer gently for six hours, and cool in the liquid. Take it out, put it between two dishes, and place a weight on the top, and let it remain thirty-six hours before being taken out to be cut. Before dishing, remove the tapes, and garnish the dish with savoury jelly (see ASPIC JELLY FOR GARNISHING). If preferred, the veal may be very gently baked in the oven. It should then be basted liberally with bacon fat.
A full-scale cold buffet piece from the era of the garde-manger, and one of the few dishes in the book that genuinely takes three days from start to table. The bulk of the work is in the rolling; the part most worth changing is the pressing, which the original assumes will happen in a cold larder.
- Press it in the refrigeratorThe galantine cools in its stock, then sits weighted for thirty-six hours. Victorian kitchens had a cold larder; a modern kitchen does not. Chill the whole thing, pressed and weighted, at refrigerator temperature throughout, and count the thirty-six hours from the point it is properly cold.
- The cut of meatA boned breast of veal runs roughly 4-5 lb once the ribs are out and will need ordering. Ask the butcher to bone it in one flat piece and keep the bones, which go into the poaching liquid. Pounding with a chopper is really about evening the thickness so it rolls without a hollow core.
- Spoon measuresA dessert-spoonful is 2 teaspoons; a salt-spoonful is about a quarter teaspoon, so half of one is a pinch of mace. The dessert-spoonful of salt is for the whole roll, not per pound, and is on the light side once you add a pound of ham.
- Anchovy sauceThis means a bottled anchovy condiment, thin and dark; anchovy essence is the nearest thing on sale now. Anchovy paste from a tube gives much the same effect at about a teaspoon, or use half a mashed salted anchovy fillet.
- Sweet herbs"Sweet herbs, powdered" is dried thyme, marjoram and a little savoury or basil, rubbed to a powder; the "bunch of sweet herbs" in the pot is the fresh equivalent, a bouquet garni. Truffles can be left out without wrecking the dish, though the cut face loses its dark marbling.
- Rolling and bindingCotton tape is still sold for this and holds better than string, which cuts into the meat under pressure. Sew the roll into scalded muslin or a double layer of cheesecloth, tightly, or the forcemeat spreads and the slices lose their pattern.
- Six hours is too longA rolled breast of this size is done in about three hours at a bare simmer, when the centre reaches 165F/74C. Six hours will not hurt it in the way overcooked oysters suffer, but the veal shreds and the layers blur when sliced. Check with a probe through the cloth.
- The oven alternative"Very gently baked" points to a low oven, somewhere around 300-325F, covered, with a little stock in the tin and frequent basting. The book gives no temperature, so go by the same internal temperature rather than a fixed time.
- Yield and servingA galantine this size serves 12-16 as a cold course, cut in thin slices across the roll so the ham, egg and forcemeat show. Chill the aspic garnish separately and chop it, rather than trying to glaze the whole piece.
Galantine takes its name from the Old French galatine, a medieval word for a jellied or spiced sauce, and the sense drifted over centuries from the jelly to the boned, stuffed, poached meat set in it. By the nineteenth century it had become one of the defining exercises of the cold kitchen: a whole bird or a breast of veal boned out, layered with forcemeat and contrasting fillings, poached in its own stock and pressed so that every slice showed a deliberate pattern. It also reflects how a large Victorian household ate: a cold, pressed joint kept for days in the larder, sliced as needed for luncheon or a supper table, and judged as much on the look of the cut face as on the taste.