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Veal Olives, Roasted
Prepare the olives as before. Skewer them and bind them firmly to keep in the forcemeat. Flour them, or, if preferred, dip them in egg and roll them in bread-crumbs, lay them on a lark-spit, and put them down to a clear fire. Baste liberally till done enough. Take them up, and serve with good brown gravy or with mushroom sauce and sliced cucumber. Time to roast the olives, about three-quarters of an hour.
A cross-reference recipe: the rolls themselves are made elsewhere in the book, and this entry covers only the roasting. Thin veal escalopes are spread with forcemeat, rolled, tied, and cooked in front of a fire.
- The olives themselvesThin slices of veal spread with forcemeat, rolled up and tied. The book gives the method elsewhere; the cut, the thickness and the finished size are not specified here.
- Bind, do not skewer and hopeBind, do not leave it loose -- If the roll opens the forcemeat falls out. The recipe itself says to skewer and bind firmly; kitchen string at both ends and once round the middle is one way to do it.
- The lark-spitA small light spit made for birds and other items too small for the main jack. There is no modern equivalent; roast the rolls on a rack over a tray, or thread them on metal skewers laid across a roasting pan.
- "A clear fire" in oven terms"A clear fire" -- A fire burnt down to glowing coals with no flame or smoke, giving fierce radiant heat from one side. The book gives no oven setting; a hot oven of around 400F is a modern approximation only, ideally after browning the rolls in a pan so the crumb coat colours.
- TimingThree-quarters of an hour suits spit-roasting, where heat comes from one side and much of it is lost to the room. In a closed oven the same rolls are done in 25-30 minutes, or when the centre of the forcemeat reaches 160F. Longer than that and lean veal goes dry and grainy.
- BastingThe recipe says to baste liberally. The floured finish has no fat of its own, so melted butter or dripping is wanted; with the egg-and-crumb option, heavy basting will soften the coating.
- ServingBrown gravy means a meat-stock gravy, not a flour-and-water one. The alternative pairs mushroom sauce with sliced cucumber, which cuts the richness of the forcemeat.
- YieldAllow two olives per person as a main course, three if they are small. The recipe gives no quantities.
"Olive" here has nothing to do with the fruit. One proposed, though disputed, etymology traces the name to the Middle English alows or aloes, from Old French, meaning a thin slice of meat rolled around a stuffing; a parallel dish survives in French as alouettes sans tête, "headless larks", and in the English beef olive still made in Britain today. The recipe has the cook lay them on a lark-spit, the small multi-pronged spit kept for roasting little birds, though such a spit was the general small spit, used for anything little. Veal olives appear constantly in Victorian cookery books, and they cooked quickly in front of a fire that was already lit.