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Veal and Ham Patties
Line patty-pans with puff-paste in the usual way, bake them, and fill them with a mixture prepared as follows. Mince finely six ounces of cooked lean veal and three ounces of cooked ham. Put a quarter of a pint of cream and a quarter of a pint of white stock into a saucepan; thicken this sauce with white roux or with a small piece of butter rolled in flour, and simmer till it is smooth, and coats the spoon. Add a little pepper, salt, and cayenne, and a flavouring of grated nutmeg and lemon-rind, together with a little lemon-juice. Put in the minced meat, and simmer gently, stirring all the time, till it is quite hot--but it must not boil, or it will be hard. Time, ten to fifteen minutes to heat the mince.
A Victorian way of using up cooked joints: a thick, well-seasoned mince bound in cream sauce and spooned into pre-baked pastry shells. The whole dish depends on the sauce being finished before the meat goes near it.
- Don't let it boilThe instruction to heat the mince without boiling is the hinge of the recipe. Already-cooked veal and ham seize and turn stringy if the sauce is allowed to bubble; keep it below a bare tremble and stir until just hot through. The book allows ten to fifteen minutes for this.
- Patty-pansThese are small shallow tartlet or bun tins rather than modern muffin cups. The book says only to line them with puff-paste and bake them; the cases need to be fully baked before filling, since they get no further oven time once the mince goes in.
- A quarter of a pintImperial measure: 5 fl oz, about 150 ml, so 300 ml of liquid in total. Half cream and half stock gives a very rich sauce; it should be thick enough to hold on the spoon before the meat is added, as the mince will loosen it.
- White stockA pale, unroasted veal or chicken stock. Any light unsalted chicken stock works; avoid dark brown stock, which muddies both the colour and the point of the dish.
- White roux or butter and flourThe alternative given is beurre mani": about 15 g butter worked with 15 g flour, whisked into the hot liquid in small pieces. Simmer a few minutes after it thickens so the sauce does not taste of raw flour.
- Seasoning quantitiesThe book leaves these to judgement. A good grating of nutmeg, the zest of half a lemon, a teaspoon of juice and cayenne on the tip of a knife suit the 9 oz of meat. Note that the recipe puts the lemon juice into the sauce before the mince goes in, not at the end.
- YieldSix ounces of veal and three of ham with this quantity of sauce makes a generous amount of filling; how many patties it runs to depends on the size of the pans. They are best filled just before serving, since the pastry softens quickly.
Patties in this sense are pastry cases with a savoury filling, closer to the French petits pat"s than to anything minced and fried; the word is generally taken to be an English rendering of pat", in use from the early eighteenth century. The method demonstrates a principle as much as a single dish: a v"lout"-style sauce of stock and cream, thickened with roux or butter and flour, then used to bind cold cooked meat. Veal and ham were a standard Victorian pairing, seen also in the raised pie. The insistence that the mince must not boil belongs to a kitchen in which reheating cooked meat was routine work.