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Quenelles for Turtle Soup
Take about a quarter of a pound of lean white veal, cut it into long slices, and scrape it with a knife till nothing but the fibre remains. Pound this to a smooth paste, and rub it through a wire sieve upon a plate. Make it into a ball, and take its bulk, not its weight, in panada (see PANADA) and calf's udder. Many cooks substitute fresh butter for the udder: when it is used a smaller preportion will be required. Pound these ingredients, and press them through a sieve, first separately and afterwards together; season the forcemeat with salt, pepper, and grated nutmeg, and add, gradually, the yolks of two eggs and the white of one. After pounding the ingredients together, pass the whole again through a sieve, and before poaching the quenelles, test a little piece of the forcemeat by throwing it into boiling water. If, when it is taken out, it is not sufficiently firm, add the yolk of another egg. Mould it in balls of any size that may be preferred. Poach these in boiling water until they are sufficiently hard, drain them, when done enough, put them into the tureen, and pour the soup gently over them. The quenelles may be made as small as marbles or as large as eggs; the former size is generally preferred for soup. Time to poach, from six to fifteen minutes, according to size. Probable cost, 1s. 3d. for this quantity. Sufficient for a large tureen of soup.
A classic veal forcemeat dumpling, built by volume rather than weight and thickened with a bread-and-milk panada. A food processor does in two minutes what the original expects you to do with a mortar and three passes through a sieve.
- The hinge: test one before you poach the restDrop a marble-sized piece into barely simmering water first. If it collapses or feels slack, work in another yolk; if it is rubbery and tight, the mixture is over-egged and needs a spoonful more panada or cream. Everything else in the recipe forgives you, this does not.
- Measure by bulk, not weightRoll the pounded veal into a ball and match that volume with panada and with fat; the recipe does not make clear whether it means that bulk of each or of the two together. Note also that the quarter pound is the starting weight: scraping leaves the fibre behind, so the paste will come to rather less. The instruction to reduce the fat if using butter rather than udder is the book's own.
- Calf's udderA soft, mild cooking fat once common in butchers' shops and now effectively unobtainable. The book's own substitute is fresh butter (i.e. unsalted); cold butter or a little heavy cream both work, and both need to go in cold so the paste does not break.
- PanadaThe recipe cross-refers to a separate entry, not reproduced here; a panada of this period is generally bread cooked to a stiff paste with milk or stock and then cooled. Have it properly cold before it meets the veal, or the fat softens and the quenelles poach loose.
- Scraping the vealScraping with a knife takes off the soft pulp and leaves the sinew and fibre behind, which is the whole point. If you use a processor instead, trim every scrap of silverskin first and keep the meat and bowl refrigerator-cold, pulsing rather than running.
- "Boiling water" means barely simmeringA true rolling boil tears quenelles apart. The book gives no temperature; hold the water just trembling and poach uncovered until they are set through and float.
- Timing and sizeSix minutes suits marble-sized quenelles, twelve to fifteen the egg-sized ones. Marble size is right for soup, and the original is correct that they should go into the tureen dry and have the hot soup poured over rather than being cooked in it.
- YieldThe book says only that this quantity is sufficient for a large tureen of soup; the count of marble-sized quenelles will depend on how small you roll them.
Quenelle is generally traced to the Alsatian Kn cdel family of dumpling words, and entered French professional cookery as the standard soup garnish: pounded white meat or fish, panada, fat, egg, all pushed through a sieve until it is silk. Turtle soup was the grandest thing a Victorian kitchen could send to table, and a clear turtle consomm ed garnish of forcemeat balls and the turtle's own green fat was the mark of a serious establishment; where real turtle was beyond the household, mock turtle made from a calf's head took its place and was garnished the same way. Calf's udder was one of the recognised forcemeat fats, and it is often said to have been preferred for a paler, lighter result, though the rationale is traditional rather than documented; the quoted cost of 1s. 3d. shows how a book of this kind tried to price haute cuisine for the middle-class reader.