Home › The Principles of Cookery › Quenelles, Forcemeat For
Quenelles, Forcemeat For
Quenelle forcemeat is made by mixing meat, poultry, game, or fish with an equal quantity in bulk of panada and calf's udder: it should be remembered that each ingredient must be pounded and passed through a sieve by itself, and afterwards all be pounded together, and then passed through the sieve. The preparation of the udder is a troublesome and tedious process, besides which the udder cannot always be procured. Therefore fresh butter is frequently substituted for it; and when this is the case the following proportions may be followed: they will be found to make good forcemeat, whether meat, poultry, game, or fish is used. Take half a pound of meat properly prepared, a quarter of a pound of panada (see PANADA), and three ounces of fresh butter. Pound these together, with a little salt, cayenne, and mace, if the panada is not already seasoned. A little anchovy may be added for fish quenelles. Mix in gradually a table-spoonful of good white sauce, the yolks of two eggs and the white of one. Test the forcemeat as directed in the preceding recipes (see QUENELLES, ETC.), and, if required, add a little more seasoning or the yolk of another egg: keep the preparation in a cool place or upon ice until it is wanted. It will keep for a day or two. (See also FORCEMEAT FOR QUENELLES.)
A base preparation rather than a finished dish: the forcemeat is shaped into quenelles and poached in stock or salted water. The proportions given (2 parts meat : 1 part panada : rather less than 1 part fat) are the useful part, and they still work.
- Keep it cold, alwaysThis is the hinge. The butter must stay solid and the mixture properly cold, or the emulsion breaks and the quenelles poach out coarse and greasy. Chill the bowl, the meat and the blade, and work in short bursts.
- The pounding and sievingThe instruction to pound each element separately, then together, then sieve again, is mortar-and-tammy technique. A food processor does the whole job: purée the meat alone, add the cold panada, then the butter, then sieve the finished paste through a drum sieve or fine mesh for the silky texture the original is chasing.
- PanadaThe book's own entry covers it; in practice a stiff paste of milk and bread, or of flour cooked in milk or stock, cooled until firm. It must be cold and dry-ish, not slack, or the forcemeat will not hold.
- Calf's udderA soft, bland cooking fat once sold by butchers and now essentially unobtainable. The recipe's own substitution of fresh butter is the one to follow; no adjustment needed.
- Weights in modern terms8 oz prepared meat, poultry, game or fish; 4 oz panada; 3 oz butter; 2 yolks and 1 white; 1 tablespoon white sauce. That comes to roughly 1 lb of forcemeat. The recipe states no yield; a pound will make something in the order of a dozen and a half dessertspoon quenelles, depending on how they are shaped.
- Mace and cayenneGround mace is the dried aril, the lacy covering of the nutmeg seed, and tastes close to nutmeg though less sweet; nutmeg is the nearest stand-in, used sparingly. Both it and the cayenne should be barely detectable.
- Testing the forcemeatPoach a teaspoonful in barely simmering water for two or three minutes, then taste. If it falls apart, add the extra yolk the recipe mentions; if it is rubbery and tight, a spoonful more cream or sauce loosens it. Do this before shaping the batch.
- Poaching, not boilingWater at a shiver, around 175F. A rolling boil tears the quenelles apart and toughens them. Three to six minutes depending on size, until they roll over and feel springy.
- Keeping it"A day or two" assumed a cold larder or ice. This is raw meat or fish bound with raw egg: refrigerate covered and use within 24 hours.
The quenelle is French haute cuisine's answer to the dumpling, and the word is generally traced to the Alsatian German Knödel, carried west and refined into something considerably lighter than its ancestor. By the time Cassell's was compiled in the later nineteenth century, quenelles were a fixture of the professional English kitchen too, used to garnish soups, to line and stuff timbales, and to furnish a delicate entrée in their own right. The instruction to pound each element separately and sieve twice tells you what kind of kitchen this was written for: one with a marble mortar, a hair tammy cloth and a scullery hand with an idle hour. The passing remark that "the preparation of the udder is a troublesome and tedious process, besides which the udder cannot always be procured" is a small record of a fat falling out of use, and of a dictionary quietly conceding that butter would do.