New Orleans Veal Balls
Josephine Nicaud
Chop fine a pound of young veal. Season with salt, pepper, thyme and onion juice. Roll this in balls. Let them brown in a saucepan with butter an hour before you have prepared the sauce.
A simple Creole boulette — seasoned veal rolled and browned, meant to finish cooking in a sauce of your choosing.
- “Onion juice”Grate an onion and squeeze out the juice for seasoning without texture — about a teaspoon per pound.
- The recipe is only half the dishIt browns the balls “an hour before you have prepared the sauce” — they’re meant to simmer and finish in a gravy or tomato sauce the cook assumed you’d have on hand.
- Add a binder for reliabilityThe original is just meat and seasoning. A beaten egg and a spoonful of breadcrumbs help the balls hold together in the sauce.
- Brown, don’t cook throughAim for good color on the outside; they’ll cook through gently in the sauce, staying tender rather than dry.
- Season boldlyThyme, onion, salt, and pepper are the whole flavor here, so be generous — fry off a pinch of the raw mix to taste, and adjust.
The little seasoned meatball turns up in kitchens the world over, and in French-speaking Louisiana it is the boulette, from boule, “ball.” Creole and Cajun cooks made them from whatever was at hand — veal, beef, pork, even fish or crawfish — browning them first and then letting them drink up a rich brown or tomato gravy. Spare recipes like this one, which trust the cook to supply the sauce and the sense, are typical of nineteenth-century community cookbooks: they were written cook-to-cook, as reminders among people who already knew their way around a stove.
From page 36 of the 1904 edition.
Original page from the book
