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Veal, Potted
Take about a pound of cooked veal free from skin, bone, fat, and gristle. Cut it into small pieces, and mince finely. Put it in a mortar, and whilst pounding keep adding gradually as much pepper, salt, and pounded mace as will season and flavour it pleasantly, together with about two ounces of butter broken into small pieces, and a spoonful or two of strong veal gravy made by stewing the bones and trimmings in water. Pound the preparation till it is a perfectly-smooth paste, press it into small jars, and cover with a layer of clarified butter or dripping a quarter of an inch thick. The addition of a quarter of a pound of lean ham will greatly improve this dish. Let it stand twenty-four hours before using it, and store in a cool, dry place.
A Victorian way of using up cold roast veal: pound it to a paste, seal it under butter, and treat it as a spread. The technique still works, but the storage advice does not.
- Refrigerate, and eat within a few days"A cool, dry place" meant a stone larder, and even then potted meats were made in small jars and eaten quickly. Cooked meat sealed under fat at room temperature is an anaerobic environment; keep the jars in the refrigerator and finish them within three or four days, or freeze them.
- The mortar is a food processorPounding to a perfectly smooth paste is the point of the recipe, not a quaint detail: the recipe says to pound until it is 'a perfectly-smooth paste', or it reads as chopped meat. A processor gets there quickly, but pulse rather than run it, and scrape down often.
- Seasoning is left to you"As much pepper, salt, and pounded mace as will season and flavour it pleasantly" is genuinely open. As a starting point for a pound of veal, about a teaspoon of salt, half a teaspoon of white pepper and a quarter teaspoon of ground mace; taste as you go, since the mixture is eaten cold and cold food needs more seasoning than warm.
- MaceThe outer covering of the nutmeg, sold ground or in blades. It is a characteristic flavour of English potted meats. It is not simply interchangeable with nutmeg spoon for spoon; the two differ in intensity, so substitute cautiously and taste.
- The gravy mattersVeal bones and trimmings simmered in water give a gelatinous stock, and the recipe specifies it rather than plain liquid. A tablespoon or two of good reduced veal or chicken stock will stand in.
- Clarified butter, not melted butterThe seal has to be free of milk solids and water or it will spoil and go grainy. Melt butter gently, let it settle, and pour off the clear fat, leaving the white sediment behind. Pour it over the paste only when the paste is cold, so the two layers stay distinct.
- The ham additionA quarter pound of lean cooked ham brings salt and colour to what is otherwise a very pale, mild mixture. If you add it, cut the salt in the seasoning back sharply.
- YieldAbout a pound and a bit of paste, more if you add the ham — two or three small ramekins. The recipe's twenty-four hour rest before using is for the flavours to settle, not for safety.
Potting was one of the standard English methods of keeping cooked meat before refrigeration: pound it fine, drive out the air, and seal the surface with a layer of fat that excludes it. Recipes for potted beef, venison, tongue, salmon and lobster run through English cookery books from the seventeenth century onward, and by the nineteenth century potting had largely shifted from preservation to economy — a way of turning the remains of a joint into something for the breakfast or supper table. Veal appears constantly in Victorian recipes, and its blandness is exactly why these recipes lean so hard on mace, pepper and a piece of ham. The direct descendant is the potted shrimp still sold under a butter seal in Britain.