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OLIVES (a la Reine)
Boil two pounds of mealy potatoes, and mix them very smoothly with six ounces of fine flour and two ounces of fresh butter. Roll the paste out, and stamp it into rounds a quarter of an inch thick and four inches in diameter. Put a small piece of cold roast beef or veal in the middle of each round, moisten the edges with a little cold water, and draw the paste up into a ball. Fry the olives in hot fat until they are lightly browned all over, drain the fat from them, and serve on a hot dish. Send good brown gravy to table in a tureen. Time, about five minutes to fry the olives. Sufficient for six persons. Probable cost, 3s. 6d.
A Victorian way with Monday's cold joint: potato pastry wrapped round a scrap of roast beef and fried. It works, but the paste is temperamental and the frying is the part that goes wrong.
- The hinge: keep the potato dryBoil the potatoes whole in their skins, drain, and let them steam dry in the pan before mashing and mixing. Waterlogged potato makes a slack paste that absorbs fat and splits in the fryer.
- Mealy potatoesA floury, high-starch variety — russet, Maris Piper, King Edward. Waxy salad potatoes will not bind with only six ounces of flour.
- Work the paste warm, shape it coldMix while the potato is still hot so the butter melts in, then chill the paste before rolling and stamping. Cold paste seals reliably; warm paste tears.
- Frying temperatureThe original just says hot fat. Aim for 340-360F (170-180C). Much hotter and the outside colours before the centre warms; much cooler and the potato drinks oil. Five minutes is right at that temperature.
- Seal them properlyWater alone on the edges is a weak seal for a deep-fried parcel. Press the seams firmly, roll each ball smooth between the palms, and set them seam-down to rest before frying.
- The meat is already cookedCold roast beef or veal only needs heating through, so cut it small — half-inch dice — and season it. Raw meat in the centre will not cook in five minutes.
- Yield and costThe recipe says six persons but does not say how many olives that means; these quantities of paste will stamp out rather more than a dozen four-inch rounds. The 3s. 6d. is a Victorian household price and has no modern equivalent worth quoting.
- The gravy is not optionalThese are dry on the plate without it. A proper brown gravy, sent separately in a tureen so the crusts stay crisp, is the whole point of the dish.
An "olive" in English cookery has nothing to do with the fruit: it is a small oval or ball of meat, usually a thin slice rolled round stuffing, as in beef olives -- a name of uncertain origin, traditionally connected with Old French forms such as aloyau, or with alouette, "lark," though the derivation is folk tradition rather than settled etymology. Here Cassell's borrows the shape and the name for something quite different, a potato-paste croquette built around leftover roast, and dresses it up with the suffix a la Reine, which on nineteenth-century menus most often marked a chicken or rich white-sauce dish, but was also applied loosely to mean "in the best style." The dish belongs squarely to the Victorian economy of cold meat: a large joint on Sunday was expected to reappear disguised for several days after, and dictionaries of cookery gave considerable space to the art of making the second appearance look like a first. Potato pastry, cheap and forgiving, was one of the standard disguises.