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VEAL OLIVES (another way) (Cut from the fillet five)
Cut from the fillet five slices of veal six inches long, four wide, and as thin as possible, and an equal number of exceedingly thin slices of bacon of the same shape and size. Flatten the veal with a chopper, spread a portion of forcemeat upon it, and cover this with the bacon. Roll the olives firmly, and fasten them with a skewer, or bind them with twine. Flour them, or, if preferred, dip them twice in beaten egg and bread-crumbs. Brown them in a little fat, put them side by side in a small stewpan, cover with gravy, and simmer very gently till tender, basting them constantly. When done enough place them on a dish, strain and skim the gravy, and stir into it a glassful of light wine or a table-spoonful of lemon-juice or walnut pickle. Let it boil, pour it over the olives, and serve. By way of variety, instead of ordinary veal forcemeat the stuffing may be prepared as follows. With the back of a knife scrape half a pound of uncooked veal and one ounce of lean ham till the fibre only is left. Put the pulp into a mortar with a cleaned anchovy, an ounce of suet from the loin chopped separately, a tea-spoonful of finely-chopped parsley, half a tea-spoonful of mixed and powdered herbs, a dessert spoonful of cornflour, and a little salt, cayenne, and grated nutmeg. Mix and pound the ingredients thoroughly, and bind the forcemeat together with beaten egg. Time, about two hours to stew the olives. Probable cost, veal, 1s. 1d. per pound. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A straightforward stuffed-and-rolled veal dish; the only real trap is the stated cooking time, which belongs to a much tougher piece of meat than most cooks will buy today.
- Cut and thicknessAsk for veal escalopes or cutlets from the leg (the "fillet" here means the top round, not the tenderloin), then pound them between sheets of plastic to about 1/8 inch. Six by four inches is a good target size.
- Two hours is too longThat timing assumes older, coarser veal. Thin escalopes rolled around forcemeat should be tender in about 45 to 60 minutes of bare simmering; beyond that the meat tightens and the rolls go dry and stringy. Cook until a skewer slides in easily and the forcemeat registers 160F.
- Bare simmer, not a boil"Simmer very gently" is the hinge. The gravy should barely tremble. A rolling boil squeezes the veal, splits the rolls at the seam, and clouds the sauce you are about to reduce and pour over.
- GravyThis means brown stock, not thickened modern gravy — veal or beef stock, enough to cover the rolls as the recipe directs. Basting "constantly" is the period way of saying do not let the exposed tops dry out; a lid or a cartouche does the same job with less attention.
- CornflourBritish cornflour is American cornstarch. Here it is a binder in the forcemeat, not a thickener for the sauce.
- Scraping the vealScraping raw veal with a knife back to leave "the fibre only" is the pre-machine method of making a fine pulp. A food processor does it in seconds; keep the meat and suet very cold so the fat does not smear.
- Suet and anchovyLoin suet can be replaced with an ounce of cold beef fat or unsmoked fatback, chopped fine. The anchovy is a salting and savoury agent rather than a fish flavour — one fillet, mashed, rinsed of excess brine.
- Walnut picklePickled walnut liquor, a standard Victorian sharpener, is still sold by British specialists. Mushroom ketchup or a teaspoon of Worcestershire plus a squeeze of lemon gives a comparable dark, sour-savoury lift; the recipe already offers lemon juice as an alternative.
- YieldFour to five as the original states, but only as part of a fuller meal. The recipe makes five rolls, so a modern main course of two rolls a head with mashed potato or buttered rice means scaling the quantities up.
"Olive" here has nothing to do with the fruit: it is the English name for a thin slice of meat rolled around stuffing, cousin to the French paupiette and to the dish the French call alouettes sans tête, larks without heads, for the plump shape of the bundle. The word is generally traced to alou or aloe, an older term for such a roll, later reshaped by folk etymology into "olive"; beef olives appear in English cookery books long before Cassell's. Veal made an ideal candidate because the meat is bland and lean and takes kindly to being wrapped in bacon and packed with a rich forcemeat. The second stuffing given here — scraped raw veal and ham pounded in a mortar with anchovy, suet and herbs — is a small piece of household charcuterie, the sort of patient hand labour a Victorian kitchen with staff could take for granted.