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Veal Cutlets, Larded and Served Cold, Superlative
Take six or eight thick veal cutlets, and prepare them as in the last recipe. Put them between two dishes, and press them till cold; then trim them neatly, and brush them over twice with liquid glaze. Serve on a dish, and garnish with aspic jelly and Montpellier butter. They will have a good appearance arranged as follows. Boil some rice in water till it is tender and quite dry, then pound it, and press it into a flat round mould. When it is cold and stiff turn it out, place it in the centre of a dish, cover with Montpellier butter, arrange the cutlets round it with the bones inward, and put a little chopped aspic jelly between each one. Ornament the top of the rice with Montpellier butter and aspic jelly, fill the bottom of the dish with chopped aspic, and serve.
A garde-manger set piece rather than a dinner dish: cooked veal cutlets pressed flat, glazed, and built into a cold centrepiece. Most of the work is in the four components the text assumes you already have — larded cutlets, meat glaze, aspic and Montpellier butter.
- "As in the last recipe"The referenced recipe is not reproduced here; the title indicates the cutlets are larded, and they are cooked and left to cool before this recipe begins. Cook them to 145F/63C at the centre and chill promptly; the whole dish depends on meat that is thoroughly cold before it is glazed.
- PressingBetween two dishes with a weight on top; a couple of tins is enough. The aim is a flat, even surface that takes glaze cleanly. Press in the refrigerator, not on the counter.
- Liquid glazeGlace de viande: brown stock reduced until it coats a spoon heavily and sets to a rubbery block when cold. Warm it to brushing consistency, apply a thin coat, let it set, then apply a second. Commercial demi-glace or a reduced stock concentrate stands in acceptably.
- Montpellier butterButter pounded with blanched parsley, chervil, tarragon and chives, plus anchovy, capers, shallot and a little garlic, seasoned with oil and vinegar and often coloured with blanched spinach. Make it in a food processor, then pass it through a sieve if you want it smooth enough to pipe.
- Aspic jellyClarified stock set with gelatine. For a jelly firm enough to chop into glittering dice, work to roughly 1 oz (25-30 g) powdered gelatine per quart/litre of stock; a softer set will smear rather than cut.
- The rice socleBoiled rice pounded to a paste and moulded was a Victorian pedestal, meant to be looked at more than eaten. A short-grain rice cooked until sticky, pounded while warm and chilled overnight in a straight-sided mould will unmould cleanly. A round of moulded rice salad or a simple wooden or ceramic riser does the same job for a modern table.
- Assembly and holdingBuild on a chilled platter and keep the finished dish refrigerated until service; the butter softens and the aspic weeps in a warm room. Do not leave it standing on a buffet through a long meal.
- YieldSix to eight cutlets serve six to eight as a cold main course, or more as one dish among several on a cold table.
Cold larded veal belongs to the Victorian cold table — the ball supper, the wedding breakfast, the shooting luncheon — where food was arranged rather than served hot, and where the kitchen's skill was judged on the clarity of the aspic and the neatness of the piping. The vocabulary here is straight from French professional practice as it was absorbed into English service: glace de viande for the shine, chopped aspic for the sparkle, and a socle, the moulded pedestal, to raise the composition off the flat of the dish. Socles of pounded rice or semolina were part of garde-manger practice in the later nineteenth century, and were understood to be structural rather than appetising. Montpellier butter is traditionally traced to the southern French city whose name it carries, and it appears again and again in this period on cold salmon, cold chicken and cold veal. Cassell's, aimed at the middle-class household of the later nineteenth century, prints these show dishes alongside plain boiled mutton — a reminder that the same book was expected to teach the cook and impress the mistress's guests.