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GODIVEAU (a French forcemeat)
Take a pound of the fillet of veal, and a pound and a half of good beef suet. Remove the skin and gristle, chop the meat small, and pound it in a mortar. Add a tea-spoonful of salt, half a tea-spoonful of pepper, half a nutmeg, grated, a table-spoonful of scalded and minced parsley, and a tea-spoonful of chopped onions or chives, if the latter are suitable for the dish with which the forcemeat is to be served. Add, whilst pounding--a tea-spoonful at a time--two well-beaten eggs, and a little water. Take the forcemeat up, and put it in a cool place for an hour. It should be so thoroughly pounded that no pieces are distinguishable. When a large quantity of forcemeat is required, a little custard may be gradually mixed with the other ingredients. This forcemeat should be made in a cool place, and quickly. It is a good plan to fry a small quantity of it in hot fat, to see if it suits the taste, and then add either another egg, a little water, or a little more seasoning, as required. Time, about half an hour to prepare. Probable cost, 1s. 2d. per pound.
Godiveau is the classic veal-and-suet forcemeat that underpins quenelles, stuffed poultry and garnished entrées. Almost everything about its success is temperature and texture.
- Cold is the hingeSuet and veal emulsify only while thoroughly chilled; if the fat warms and smears, the mixture breaks and the quenelles will be greasy and heavy. Chill meat, fat, bowl and blade, work fast, and return the mixture to the refrigerator if it starts to soften.
- Mortar to processorA food processor does in a few minutes what the recipe expects of prolonged hand pounding; the original allows about half an hour to prepare in all. Pulse the veal and suet separately to a paste, combine, then add the beaten egg and water a spoonful at a time with the motor running, as the original directs.
- Beef suetFresh beef kidney suet, skinned and free of membrane, is meant here, not the boxed shredded suet sold for puddings, which is coated in flour. A butcher will supply it; ask for it well chilled.
- "Fillet of veal"In Victorian British butchery the fillet is the boneless leg meat, not the tenderloin. Lean veal from the leg or shoulder is the right substitute.
- "A little custard"This most likely means an unsweetened mixture of egg and cream, added cold to loosen a large batch, rather than a sweet dessert custard. Iced cream alone is often used for the same purpose today.
- Half a nutmegHalf a whole nutmeg grated comes to something like a teaspoon or more of ground nutmeg, which is assertive. Use a good deal less if the forcemeat is going with delicate fish or chicken.
- The test quenelleFrying a scrap to check seasoning is sound practice and still standard; poaching a teaspoonful in barely simmering salted water tells you more, since it shows whether the mixture holds together or falls apart. If it is dense, beat in a little more iced water; if it collapses, add egg.
- The resting hourThe hour in a cool place firms the mixture, and salted meat pastes are generally reckoned to bind better after standing. Refrigerate rather than leaving it out, and use it the same day.
- Yield and useTwo and a half pounds of raw ingredients gives roughly the same weight of forcemeat, enough to stuff a large bird with plenty left over, or to make about forty small quenelles. Poach quenelles in barely trembling stock or salted water until just set through; cook any stuffing to a safe internal temperature, as this is a raw veal and egg mixture.
Godiveau belongs to the older French repertoire of pounded forcemeats, the family that also produced quenelles de brochet and the stuffings for vol-au-vents and timbales. The word is old French and its origin is genuinely obscure, though it appears in cookery writing long before the nineteenth century; by the era of Carême and later Escoffier, godiveau had settled into a fixed formula of lean veal, an equal or greater weight of beef kidney suet, egg and iced water or cream, with a version enriched with cream and worked with ice known as godiveau à la glace. Cassell's treats it as a building block of the kitchen: a Victorian cook used it to line moulds, bind galantines, garnish soups and stretch expensive meat, pounding it by hand, and the instruction to work \"in a cool place, and quickly\" mattered a great deal more before refrigeration.