Home › The Principles of Cookery › Veal, Minced
Veal, Minced
Take the remains of cold cooked veal free from skin, bone, and fat. Mince finely, and put the meat aside. Put the brown skin, the bones, and trimmings into a saucepan with a little salt and pepper, a pinch of grated nutmeg, and a piece of thin lemon-rind. Pour over these as much stock or water as will cover them, and let the gravy simmer till it is strong and pleasantly flavoured. Strain the sauce, and, supposing there is a pound and a half of meat, stir into it a little more seasoning if needed, one-eighth of a pint of cream or milk, and a small piece of white thickening, or about an ounce of butter rubbed in flour. When the sauce is smooth and thick put in the minced veal, and let it simmer very gently indeed till it is quite hot, but it must not boil or it will be hard. Serve on a hot dish, and garnish with toasted sippets. If brown gravy is preferred to white, the cream must be omitted, and the gravy must be thickened with brown thickening, or if this is not at hand flour and butter may be used, and a few drops of sugar browning be added. An onion with two cloves stuck into it should then be stewed with the gravy, and a glassful of port or claret may be added if liked. Fried rashers of bacon should accompany this dish. Time, an hour and a half to draw the gravy; half an hour to simmer the mince in the gravy.
A Victorian réchauffé — a way of turning yesterday's roast veal into a second dinner by building a sauce from the parts you would otherwise throw out. Most of the work is the stock, not the mince.
- The hinge: never let it boilVeal that has already been roasted has no give left in it. Once the mince goes into the sauce it should sit at a bare shiver, and the moment it is hot through it is done.
- Cut the reheating timeHalf an hour of simmering, even gently, will leave the meat dry and stringy. Five to ten minutes is enough to heat finely minced cooked veal in hot sauce. The hour and a half applies to drawing the gravy, and that part is worth the time.
- An eighth of a pintOn the imperial pint of 20 fl oz that is 2.5 fl oz — five tablespoons, or a scant third of a US cup.
- White thickeningFlour and butter worked together for thickening a white sauce; in Victorian kitchens usually a pale roux cooked in advance and kept to hand. The recipe's own fallback, an ounce of butter rubbed with flour, is the uncooked version, stirred straight into the hot sauce; roughly equal weights of each.
- Sugar browningCaramel colouring: sugar cooked to dark mahogany and let down with a little water. Modern gravy browning does the same job, and a spoonful of the strained bone stock reduced hard will darken the sauce without it.
- SippetsSmall triangles of bread, toasted or fried in butter, stood around the edge of the dish. They are structural as much as decorative — minced meat in sauce needs something crisp against it.
- Quantity and yieldA pound and a half of cooked meat is the stated basis; scale the cream and thickening down proportionally for a smaller amount. As written it serves four to six with the bacon.
- The stockSkin, bones and trimmings from a single joint give a thin liquid. Simmer uncovered so it reduces and concentrates rather than just steeping, and taste before you strain; the lemon rind and nutmeg lift what the bones give.
Cassell's belongs to a period when a large joint was expected to appear at table more than once, and cookery books devoted whole chapters to réchauffés — reheated dishes built on cold roast meat. Minced veal is one of the standard forms, alongside hashes, rissoles and croquettes, and its logic is thrift: the mince supplies the substance, while the discarded bones, skin and trimmings are boiled down to supply the flavour that the cold meat has lost. Veal was a common enough middle-class roast in nineteenth-century Britain, and its mildness is why the recipe leans on nutmeg, lemon rind and cloves — seasonings often said to have been the usual accompaniment to white meat in a Victorian kitchen. The alternative brown version, with port or claret and a clove-stuck onion, is the same dish dressed for a slightly better table; the bacon rashers are there to add the salt and fat that reheated veal conspicuously lacks.