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VEAL (a la Chartreuse)
Line a plain round or oval mould with thin slices of fat bacon. Spread a layer of veal forcemeat upon this, and fill the mould with a rich fricassee of veal. Lay dressed turnips and carrots, cut into appropriate shapes, round the edge of the mould, cover with pastry, and steam it over boiling water. Turn it out upon a dish, and serve very hot. Time to steam the chartreuse, about an hour.
A Victorian moulded dish that reheats a made fricassee inside a bacon-and-forcemeat case. The recipe assumes you already have the fricassee and the forcemeat on hand, so read it as an assembly instruction rather than a start-to-finish method.
- The hinge: everything goes in cookedThe hinge: most of it goes in cooked -- The fricassee is a made dish and the turnips and carrots are 'dressed', i.e. already cooked; the steaming mainly sets the lining and forcemeat and heats the whole through. Keep the vegetables no softer than just tender or the shape will suffer when turned out.
- "Cover with pastry"The recipe does not say what pastry or whether it is to be eaten; in this sort of moulded work the lid often served simply to keep the steam off the filling and was lifted away before turning out. Trimmings of shortcrust will do; press it firmly to the rim. Foil crimped tightly over the top is the modern equivalent.
- Fat bacon for the liningCut in near-transparent slices it melts and glazes the outside; barding fat or fat back sliced thinly serves the same purpose. Ordinary streaky bacon works but will shrink and pull apart; buy it sliced as thinly as the counter will go and overlap the pieces well, letting the ends hang over the rim so they can be folded in over the top.
- Veal forcemeatThe book does not specify it; a Victorian veal forcemeat would typically run to minced veal, breadcrumbs, suet or butter, egg, lemon zest, mace and parsley. A fine quenelle-type mixture is closer to the intended texture than a coarse sausage-style stuffing.
- The vegetable borderTurnip and carrot were cut into batons, crescents or discs and packed against the mould wall to make a striped pattern when turned out. Cook them until just tender and no further; anything soft will smear when you invert the dish.
- Steaming setupCover the mould and stand it on a trivet in a deep pan clear of the water, so it steams over rather than sits in the boiling water; keep the pan covered for the full hour and top up with boiling water as needed.
- Temperature and turning outThe recipe gives no mould size; judge the hour against what you are using and check that the centre is piping hot throughout (165F). Let it stand five minutes before inverting so the fat firms slightly, then turn it out onto a warmed dish and pour any collected juices back over.
- YieldThe recipe gives neither mould size nor number served. It is served hot, and the fricassee's own sauce is the obvious accompaniment; it does not reheat a second time with any grace.
The name is generally traced to the Carthusian monks, whose meatless diet is said to have made vegetables the centrepiece of a dish; by the nineteenth century a chartreuse in professional French cookery meant almost the opposite, an elaborately lined mould in which vegetables were arranged as decoration around a filling of game, poultry or, as here, veal. Carême and his successors built them as show pieces, with carrot and turnip cut into geometric patterns pressed against the mould wall so the pattern appeared when it was turned out. Cassell's gives it in the compressed, assume-nothing style of a dictionary entry, which tells you how routine such moulded work still was in a well-staffed kitchen: the recipe calls simply for a rich fricassee of veal and a forcemeat, with no further explanation thought necessary.