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Veal, Grenadin Of
Prepare an equal number of neat pieces of lean veal seasoned with pepper, salt, and pounded mace, and of slices of good bacon, together with a portion of good forcemeat. Line a small dish with a veal caul, and be careful to leave as much of the skin hanging over the sides as will cover the meat entirely. Fill the dish with alternate layers of bacon, veal, and forcemeat, and let bacon form the undermost and uppermost layers. Minced mushrooms and savoury herbs may be added or not. Fasten the caul over the meat, tie three or four folds of paper over the dish, and bake the grenadin in a moderately-heated oven. Turn it upon a dish, and send plenty of good brown gravy to table with it. Time to bake a small dish, about an hour.
A layered veal-and-bacon terrine baked in a caul-lined dish, closer to a pâté en terrine than to what French kitchens usually mean by grenadin. Everything hinges on the caul: it holds the loaf together and bastes it as it renders.
- Veal caulCaul fat is the lacy membrane from around a pig's or calf's stomach, sold frozen by good butchers and halal or Latin markets. Soak it in tepid salted water until pliable before lining the dish, and let a generous overhang drape outside so it can be folded back over the top. Thinly sliced back fat or streaky bacon will do the same job if caul is unavailable, though it will not melt away as invisibly.
- "Moderately-heated oven"Roughly 350°F / 175°C, Victorian oven descriptions being approximate. An hour at that heat suits a shallow dish; a deeper mould needs longer.
- The paper coverThree or four folds of paper tied over the dish is a lid, keeping the top from scorching before the middle sets. Foil crimped over the rim does the job, or a butter-rubbed sheet of parchment under foil.
- ForcemeatIn books of this period, a bound stuffing mixture, usually minced veal or pork with breadcrumbs, suet, egg, lemon peel, and herbs. About a quarter of the total meat weight is a sensible working proportion; anything looser will not slice.
- Pounded maceBlade mace ground fresh, not the pre-ground jar, which fades fast. A quarter-teaspoon per pound of meat is enough; mace is the standard warm spice of English potted and forced meats and reads as slightly floral nutmeg.
- DonenessBake to 160°F / 71°C at the centre. Veal and pork forcemeat both need it, and the bacon layers make the loaf look done well before the middle is.
- Turning outRest it in the dish for ten to fifteen minutes before inverting, or the layers will slump. Pour off the rendered fat first and save it. The loaf slices far more neatly cold, if you would rather serve it that way.
- YieldThe recipe gives no dish size beyond "small". A dish of that description would serve perhaps four to six hot with gravy, and stretch further as a cold cut.
- The gravy"Good brown gravy" means a proper veal or beef stock reduced and thickened, not pan drippings, since the caul yields mostly fat rather than fond. Make it separately and have it hot.
Grenadin in classical French usage is a small larded medallion of veal, braised and glazed — in effect a scaled-down fricandeau. The name is traditionally linked to the meat's studded, seed-like appearance, as if set with pomegranate grains, though that derivation is folk explanation rather than established fact. Here the word has been attached to something else: a caul-wrapped layered loaf of the sort English cooks built in pie dishes and terrines, veal, bacon and forcemeat in alternating strata, served hot or cold. The loose fit between the French name and the English dish is characteristic of Victorian household dictionaries, which took up continental vocabulary more readily than continental method. Caul fat was a cheap butcher's by-product, which may be why it appears so casually here as a lining that needs no explanation.