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Veal Collops, Minced, Made with Cold Meat
Take the remains of cold cooked veal. With a pound and a half of veal, freed from skin and gristle, mix half a pound of lean ham or tongue. Cut the meat into thin pieces, mince finely, and season with a pinch of cayenne, half a small nutmeg, grated, half a tea-spoonful of white pepper, half a tea-spoonful of mixed mustard, the grated rind and strained juice of half a lemon, and a few drops of anchovy. Moisten the mixture with a slice of fresh butter clarified, and a spoonful or two of strong stock, and let it form a stiff paste. Make this into neat round collops, brush each one with clarified butter, dredge flour upon it, then dip it in egg and seasoned bread-crumbs: repeat this operation twice. Put the collops in a baking-dish. Place a small piece of butter upon each, and bake in a quick oven. When lightly browned, serve them in a circle on a hot dish with cold tartar sauce in the centre (see TARTAR SAUCE). Time to bake the collops, a quarter of an hour.
A Victorian way of turning yesterday's roast veal into a hot supper dish. The whole thing hinges on the binding: the mince must be stiff enough to hold a shape before it ever meets the egg wash.
- Quick ovenA quick oven is usually taken as somewhere around 400-450F (200-230C). At that heat the quarter of an hour given is about right for browning the crumbs and heating the meat through, since the veal is already cooked.
- Collops are patties hereA collop is normally a thin slice of meat, but in this minced version the word simply means a small flat round, shaped by hand.
- Go easy on the nutmegHalf a small nutmeg grated into 2 lb of meat is heavy by modern palates and may dominate the lemon and anchovy. A quarter teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg is a safer starting point if you want the other seasonings to show.
- Anchovy and mixed mustard"A few drops of anchovy" means anchovy essence, sold then in bottles; anchovy sauce, or a small piece of mashed anchovy fillet, does the same work. "Mixed mustard" is mustard already made up with liquid, i.e. any prepared mustard, not dry powder.
- Strong stockThis means well-reduced veal or chicken stock with enough gelatine to set when cold. A thin stock will slacken the mixture; if all you have is thin broth, reduce a cup of it to a couple of tablespoons first.
- The double crumbingThe crumbing -- Butter, flour, egg, crumbs, then "repeat this operation twice" — three coats in all — gives a thick armoured coating that keeps the dry cooked meat from drying further. Chilling the shaped collops between coatings makes them easier to handle.
- Clarified butterClarified butter was standard in period cookery, and it has the practical advantage that there are no milk solids to scorch at oven heat. Melt butter gently, let it settle, and pour off the clear fat.
- YieldA pound and a half of veal with half a pound of ham makes about eight to ten collops, enough for four as a main course with the tartar sauce and a salad.
- The tartar sauceThe period sauce is a mayonnaise base with capers, gherkins and herbs, made with raw egg yolk. Use a commercial mayonnaise or pasteurised eggs if serving anyone who should avoid raw egg.
Cassell's, like many large late-Victorian household manuals, devotes long stretches to what to do with cold cooked meat — a consequence of kitchens that roasted large joints and had no refrigeration to hold them for long. Rissoles, croquettes, mince and collops of this kind were the respectable answer: the leftover is disguised, enriched with ham or tongue for savour, and dressed up with a sauce so that it arrives at table looking like a dish in its own right rather than a remainder. The word collop is old in English — the Middle English forms are of uncertain, possibly Scandinavian, origin, though it is often said to derive from a term for a slice of meat cooked on coals — and it survives in Scots usage for minced beef; by the nineteenth century it had loosened enough to cover any small flat portion. Veal was far commoner on British tables then than now, and the lemon-nutmeg-anchovy seasoning here is a very characteristic English combination, a direct descendant of the eighteenth-century habit of sharpening bland meats with anchovy and citrus.