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Rolls, Veal
Cut thin slices of uncooked veal, or, if preferred, take slices of underdone meat. Spread on each one a seasoning of minced bacon, chopped parsley, stewed and minced mushrooms, pepper, salt, and pounded mace, together with a few finely-grated bread-crumbs. Fold the meat up, and tie it securely with twine. Put the rolls into a saucepan with as much nicely-flavoured brown gravy as will cover them, and then let them simmer gently until tender. Put them on a hot dish with the gravy poured over them, and serve very hot.
A straightforward veal olive, and the whole thing hinges on how thin the slices are and how gently they cook. Two versions are offered — raw veal or leftover roast — and they need very different times in the pan.
- The slicesUse veal cutlet or leg escalopes, and beat them between sheets of plastic to about 1/8 inch. Anything thicker will not roll neatly and the outside will tighten before the centre is tender.
- Pounded maceMace is the outer covering of nutmeg, sold today as blades or ground. "Pounded" means ground fine; a good pinch per roll is enough, and grated nutmeg is the nearest substitute.
- Minced baconRaw streaky bacon or pancetta, chopped very fine so it renders into the filling rather than sitting in strips. Salt the seasoning lightly given the bacon and the gravy.
- "Nicely-flavoured brown gravy"Not a floury gravy from a jug, but a rich veal or beef stock, lightly thickened with browned flour or reduced. Enough to cover the rolls in a snug sauté pan -- roughly 2 cups for six.
- TyingFine cotton butcher's twine, two ties per roll, or a wooden cocktail stick through each seam. Remove the twine before the rolls go on the dish, not after.
- TimingRaw veal rolls need roughly 40 to 50 minutes at a bare simmer — the surface barely trembling — until a skewer meets no resistance. Rolls made from already-roasted meat need only 10 to 15 minutes to heat through; longer and the cooked veal turns dry and stringy inside its wrapper.
- Finishing the gravyLift the rolls out, reduce the cooking liquid by a third to concentrate what the veal and bacon have given it, then pour over. A tablespoon of butter whisked in at the end adds gloss, though the recipe itself simply pours the gravy over as it is.
- YieldSix rolls from about 1 1/4 lb of veal serves three or four as a main course with potatoes or rice to take the sauce.
Rolled and stuffed slices of meat run through European cookery under a great many names: olives in English books, involtini in Italian, paupiettes in French. The origin of the English word "olive" in this sense is uncertain: some authorities derive it from a French form, others from the shape of the fruit. The second line's offer of slices of underdone meat as an alternative suits a Victorian kitchen with a cold joint left from Sunday, needing ways to send it back to table looking deliberate. Veal was the natural carrier, being mild enough to take a strong forcemeat of bacon, parsley, mushroom and mace. The insistence on a good brown gravy is the tell that this belongs to a house with stockpot habits, and the dish is only as good as the liquid it simmers in.