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Olives, Veal
Proceed as for beef olives, substituting veal for beef. Place a thin slice of fat bacon or ham, of the same size and shape as the veal made with olives, roll them up securely, brush them over with egg, dip them in bread-crumbs, roast them on a lark-spit, and serve on a hot dish with brown gravy and mushrooms poured over them. Instead of being roasted, they may be stewed in a pint of veal stock, thickened with butter and flour, and garnished with beetroot or cucumber. Time, three-quarters of an hour to roast; one hour to stew. Probable cost, 3s. 6d. Sufficient for half a dozen persons.
An entry that leans on the beef olives recipe elsewhere in the book: thin slices of meat spread with forcemeat, rolled, and either roasted or braised. Two things need translating before you start — the missing stuffing and the lark-spit.
- Read the beef olives entry firstThis recipe is incomplete on its own. The "olives" are thin slices spread with a veal or pork forcemeat, seasoned and rolled; without that stuffing you have plain rolled veal. Any well-seasoned sausage-meat or breadcrumb-and-herb forcemeat stands in for the Victorian original.
- The cutUse veal escalopes or leg slices beaten out to about an eighth of an inch and cut into rectangles roughly 3 by 4 inches. Two per person is right for the stated yield of six.
- A lark-spitA short spit, sometimes a set of small skewers on a frame, used for roasting little birds in front of the fire. A rotisserie attachment does the same job; otherwise set the crumbed rolls on a rack in a hot oven, 425F, having brushed or sprayed them with fat so the crumbs colour.
- Egg-and-crumb, then heat straight awayCrumbed rolls should go to the fire while the coating is still damp-set; if they sit, the crumbs sweat and slide. Brown fat bacon renders and bastes the veal, which is lean and dries fast.
- Roasting timeThree-quarters of an hour probably reflects a slower fire and larger rolls, though the book does not say so. Rolls of the size above are cooked through in 20 to 25 minutes at 425F; take them to 160F at the centre of the forcemeat.
- A pint of veal stockAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz, a shade under 2 1/2 US cups. For the stewed version do not crumb the rolls; brown them in butter, then braise. Thicken with equal butter and flour, either as a roux at the start or kneaded in as beurre manie at the end.
- Stewing timeAn hour is long for thin rolls unless the forcemeat is dense. Thirty-five to forty minutes at a bare simmer, covered, gives tender veal; beyond that the escalope shreds and the roll falls apart.
- The garnishBeetroot or cucumber here means cooked and cut into neat shapes, laid round the dish — a colour contrast against pale veal and pale sauce, not a salad.
- Probable cost3s. 6d. is the whole dish for six in the money of the book's day.
"Olives" of meat have nothing to do with the fruit; one suggestion traces the name to a corruption of older English "alows" or "aloes", themselves said to come from the French for larks, since a stuffed, rolled slice of meat resembles a small trussed bird — the French still call the dish alouettes sans tete, larks without heads. That derivation is traditional rather than firmly documented. Beef olives appear in English cookery books from the seventeenth century onward, and Cassell's habit of writing one full recipe and then cross-referring to it — "proceed as for beef olives" — is why this veal version reads as a fragment. Veal was the natural substitute.