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Veal Olive Pie
Take the remains of a cooked fillet of veal. Cut the meat into thin slices, cover these with pieces of bacon, spread forcemeat upon them, and roll them firmly. Place them in a pie-dish, pilling them high in the centre, pour over them a little gravy made from the bones and trimmings of the veal and thickened with brown thickening. Line the edges of the dish with pastry, cover with the same, and bake the pie in a well-heated oven. The pie will, of course, be much better if the olives are made with fresh veal. Time to bake a moderate-sized pie, one hour to one hour and a half.
A leftovers pie from the era when a cold fillet of veal was a routine thing to have in the larder. The key thing to understand before starting is that there are no olives in it.
- "Olives" means rollsA veal olive is a thin slice of veal spread with stuffing and rolled. The same construction survives as a beef or veal olive in British butchery and as paupiette in French. The name is usually explained by the oval shape of the roll, though the derivation is not certain.
- Brown thickeningCassell's term for a cooked brown roux, flour browned in butter or dripping and used to thicken stock. Around 1 oz each of flour and fat per pint of gravy gives the right body; cook it to a nut brown before adding liquid or the pie tastes of raw flour.
- ForcemeatA veal forcemeat here means breadcrumbs bound with suet or butter, egg, grated lemon rind, parsley and a little mace or thyme. Keep it thin on the slice, a scant tablespoon each, or the rolls will not close.
- Oven heat"Well-heated" indicates a hot oven; in a modern one, around 425F for the first 15 to 20 minutes to set and lift the pastry, then down to 350F for the remainder, works well. The recipe's stated hour to hour and a half is for a moderate-sized pie.
- Lining the edgesOnly the rim of the dish is lined, not the base. Cut a strip of pastry, damp the rim, press the strip on, then damp the strip before laying the lid so it seals. The meat piled high in the centre holds the lid off the gravy.
- Gravy quantityThe recipe asks only for "a little" gravy: enough to moisten, not to submerge the rolls. A full dish will boil up and burst the crust.
- Veal todayRose veal or veal escalopes, beaten thin between sheets of film, do the job. Thin-cut pork loin or turkey breast substitute well if veal is not available; both are lean enough to want the bacon wrapping.
- YieldA moderate-sized pie dish, around 8 inches, will take roughly 8 to 10 olives and serve about four.
The pie belongs to a whole class of Victorian second-day cookery: a large joint was roasted for one meal, and the remains were reworked into something with a crust so as not to appear on the table twice in the same shape. Veal olives themselves are much older than this book, appearing in English cookery from at least the seventeenth century, and the name is generally traced to the oval shape of the rolled meat rather than to the fruit. The method, thin slice plus fat plus forcemeat plus roll, was treated as a technique to be learned once and applied to whatever cold meat the household had, which is why the compiler adds almost as an afterthought that fresh veal would of course make a better pie.