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Veal, Fricandelles Of
Take a pound of lean veal from the fillet, and mince it finely with half its weight in suet freed from skin and fibre. Soak four rusks in milk, then press the moisture thoroughly from them, and mix them with the minced meat. Season and flavour the preparation with pepper, salt, grated nutmeg, and finely-minced lemonrind. A little onion or shallot may be added, if liked. Bind together with the yolks of four eggs and the whites of two. Divide it into three portions, and form these into balls. Drop them into fast-boiling water, and let them remain for four minutes. Take them up, drain them, dip them into egg and bread-crumbs, and fry in hot fat till they are nicely browned. Make some gravy with the bones and trimmings of the veal. Flavour this nicely, and thicken with brown thickening. Stew the balls in this gravy a short time before they are to be served, put them on a hot dish, pour the gravy over, and garnish with slices of lemon. Time to stew the fricandelles, half an hour. Probable cost, 2s. 6d. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A Victorian forcemeat ball: minced veal enriched with suet, bound with egg, poached to set, fried, then finished in its own gravy. The sequence is the point, and each stage is short.
- The hinge: poach before you fryThe four minutes in fast-boiling water firms the outside so the balls hold their shape in the fat. Skip it and the mixture slumps and sheds crumbs. Keep the water at a full boil and lift them out the moment they set.
- Veal from the filletThis means the leg, not the loin — lean, close-grained meat. Any lean veal leg or shoulder works; grind it yourself or ask for a coarse single grind, since commercial mince is often too fine and pasty for this.
- SuetHalf a pound of beef suet to a pound of meat is a great deal of fat by current taste. Fresh beef suet from a butcher, skin and membrane pulled away, chopped or grated cold, is what is meant; packet shredded suet is an acceptable stand-in. Ground pork fat or fatty pork shoulder gives a similar result with less waxiness.
- RusksVictorian rusks were twice-baked bread, drier and blander than the sweetened teacakes sold under the name now. Four rusks is roughly 3 to 4 oz — use plain dried bread or unseasoned dry breadcrumbs, soaked in milk and squeezed hard, or the mixture will be wet.
- Brown thickeningA brown roux — flour cooked in fat until nut-coloured — often kept ready-made in Victorian kitchens. Whisk a tablespoon or two into the simmering veal stock, or use beurre manié if you want it quicker.
- Size and yieldDivided into three, the balls come out at roughly 10 oz apiece, so a portion falls somewhere between 7 and 10 oz depending on whether three or four sit down. Rolling the mixture into six to eight smaller balls suits modern plates better; reduce the poaching to about three minutes and the frying accordingly.
- DonenessHalf an hour stewing in gravy will carry them well past done, but if you have made them smaller check that the centre reaches 160F/71C. The stewing is also where the flavour arrives, so do not cut it short by more than a few minutes.
- CostTwo shillings and sixpence, quoted as a 'probable cost' in the 1870s and 80s: the sort of figure Cassell's gave to help a cook budget a week's dinners rather than an indication of luxury.
Fricandelle is not to be confused with the fricandeau that sits nearby in most Victorian cookery dictionaries: the latter is a larded, braised cushion of veal, while the fricandelle is a seasoned forcemeat ball or flattened cake. The name survives in Belgium and the Netherlands for a fried sausage-shaped snack, though that form is a much later development rather than a direct continuation of this one. Cassell's places it in the veal section because veal, mild and gelatinous, was a common carrier for made dishes of this kind: bland enough to take strong flavouring, and useful for turning a small quantity of meat, some suet and stale bread into a dish that would feed a family and look composed on the table.