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Fricadelles of Veal
Take cold veal that has been cooked in any way. Trim off all skinny or gristly parts and cut free from bone. Chop fine, add to each cupful of chopped meat 1/2 cupful of fine buttered bread crumbs. Season with salt, pepper, and kitchen bouquet or savory herbs; moisten with a little stock or gravy, make it out in thin cakes, cutlet shapes, brush with egg, and sprinkle with fine crumbs. Saute in plenty of butter or nice drippings until well browned. Tomato sauce is one of the best accompaniments. To make it, after removing the fricadelles to a hot platter, put in the frying-pan 1/2 cup of tomato pulp, 1/2 cup of white sauce, and season more with salt and pepper, if necessary. Add a dash of cayenne or paprika. Cook all together until smooth, and pour around the fricadelles.
Lamb may be used instead of veal.
A border of green peas or asparagus tips is a good garnish for this dish.
A leftovers dish from the era when a Sunday roast had to reappear twice more. The technique is sound; only the pantry has changed.
- Kitchen bouquetA dark, salty browning-and-seasoning liquid still sold under that name. A teaspoon of Worcestershire plus a little soy gives a similar effect if you have none; use it sparingly, as its job is colour and depth rather than flavour of its own.
- Buttered crumbsThese are dry breadcrumbs tossed in melted butter, roughly 2 tablespoons butter to a cup of crumbs. They are the binder and the fat here, so do not substitute plain dry crumbs without adding butter, or the cakes come out dry.
- BindingChopped cooked meat has no give, so the mixture holds together only if it is moist enough. Add stock or gravy a spoonful at a time until it just coheres when squeezed; an egg beaten into the mixture, not only brushed on, makes the cakes far easier to turn.
- Chop, do not grindA knife or a few short pulses in a food processor keeps the meat in distinct fine pieces, which is what 'chop fine' asks for. Run it to a paste and you get a dense patty rather than a cutlet.
- CookingThe meat is already cooked, so this is browning only. Medium heat, two to three minutes a side, until the crust is set and coloured through.
- White sauceA thin bechamel: 1 tablespoon butter, 1 tablespoon flour, 1 cup milk. Half a cup of it with half a cup of tomato pulp makes just enough sauce for one platter.
- Tomato pulpSieved fresh tomatoes or passata, not tomato paste, which is far more concentrated.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities, only a ratio. Two cups of chopped meat with a cup of buttered crumbs would make roughly eight small cutlets, enough for three or four.
Fricadelle comes into English from French, and across northern Europe the related words (frikadeller in Denmark, frikadel in the Netherlands) all describe a fried patty of chopped meat. Anglo-American cookbooks of the nineteenth century often used the term for a way of making cold roast presentable a second time, shaped into cutlet form so it read as a course rather than a scrap. That is why the entry begins with cold veal cooked in any way. Veal was more common in American households of the period than it is now, and its mild flavour may be why the kitchen bouquet, the herbs and the tomato sauce are all doing work the meat will not.