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VEAL, FRICANDELLES OF (another way)
Prepare the fricandelle mixture as in the last recipe. Put it into a buttered dish which it will half fill, and bake for an hour in a moderate oven. When the surface is lightly browned, pour over it a little gravy, stock, or milk, and let it bake twenty minutes longer. Pour off the gravy which swims on the top, mix with it the well-beaten yolks of two eggs, again pour it upon the mince, place it in the oven for a few minutes, and serve.
A baked version of fricandelles — the mixture is normally rolled and fried, but here it goes into a dish and is treated almost as a meatloaf finished with an egg-yolk liaison. The hinge is that last step: the yolks must set, not scramble.
- The mixture it refers toThe preceding fricandelle recipe supplies it; such forcemeats are typically minced veal worked with soaked breadcrumbs, chopped suet or butter, egg, and seasoning. Check the previous page for the exact proportions, and choose a dish the mixture will half fill.
- Moderate ovenConventionally read as somewhere around 325-350F. At that sort of heat an hour will cook a shallow bed of veal mince through; a deeper dish will need longer.
- Half fill the dishAs instructed. The mixture rises a little as it sets, and the later additions of gravy and the yolk liaison need somewhere to go, so leave the headroom the recipe calls for.
- DonenessMinced veal should reach 160F at the centre. Check with a thermometer rather than relying on the browned surface, which colours well before the middle is set.
- The liquid at twenty minutesThe recipe allows gravy, stock or milk. Whichever you use, add only enough to moisten the top, as the text says 'a little', or the mince turns sodden.
- The egg-yolk finishPour off the surface liquid, let it cool for a moment, then beat the yolks into it off the heat. A few minutes back in the oven, as the recipe says, is enough to set it to a glaze; longer and it curdles into scrambled egg.
- YieldDepends on the quantity of forcemeat in the preceding recipe; a dish of this kind would serve about four as a main course. It is a plain dish, and sharp accompaniments suit it.
Fricandelle belongs to the family of minced-meat preparations that runs through French, Belgian and Dutch cooking, and the name is generally traced to the same root as fricandeau, a larded and braised cut of veal. In Belgium and the Netherlands the fricandel survives as a fried sausage-shaped snack; in Victorian English kitchens it meant a seasoned veal forcemeat, often shaped into small cakes and fried. Cassell's offering a baked alternative suits the practical bent of the book: the oven version needs no standing over a pan. The egg-yolk liaison poured back over the top gives a plain dish a glossy finish at almost no cost.