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Galantine of Veal
Breast of veal 12x14 1/2 lb. fat bacon 1/2 lb. boiled tongue 1/2 doz. truffles 1 calf's foot 1 onion 2 carrots 1 clove of garlic 1 bunch sweet herbs 6 cloves 1/2 teaspoon peppers 2 teaspoons salt Bone, trim and wipe the meat, remove 1 pound of the meat and pound this in a mortar with bacon; season with powdered spice and sweet herbs, pepper and salt to taste. Pass the mixture through a sieve. Cut the tongue into one inch squares; cut truffles each into three or four pieces. Sprinkle the breast of veal with salt and pepper, lay the pounded meat, truffles and tongue on it, roll it up neatly and tie tightly in a cloth. Place in a stew kettle the trimmings, the calf's foot, vegetables and seasonings. Fill the kettle half full of cold water and bring slowly to a boil, when boiling add the meat roll. Let boil fifteen minutes, skim, reduce heat, and cook for two and one-half hours, or until meat is tender. Place the roll on a hot platter; when slightly cooled take off the cloth and tie up with a fresh one. Press between two plates until cold. When ready to serve, remove cloth, glaze with a cold jelly made from the boiled down liquor.
A classic cold buffet piece: a boned breast of veal stuffed with its own forcemeat, poached in a gelatinous stock, pressed flat and glazed with aspic. Nothing here is difficult, but almost every step assumes a kitchen with a mortar, a butcher who bones to order, and a cold larder.
- The hinge: press it while warmThe roll must be re-wrapped and weighted between plates as soon as it is cool enough to handle, and left until fully cold. Skip the pressing and the forcemeat will not knit, and the slices fall apart on the platter.
- "Breast of veal 12x14"The figures are unexplained in the original and carry no unit; they may be inches, the rough dimensions of the boned, flattened breast, rather than a weight. Ask the butcher to bone the breast and keep the bones and trimmings for the kettle, as the recipe directs.
- The calf's footIt is there purely for gelatin, to make the cooking liquor set into the glaze. A pig's trotter or a few split veal knuckle bones does the same job. If you cannot get either, strain and reduce the stock and set it with about 1 tablespoon powdered gelatin per pint.
- Mortar and sieveThe pound of reserved veal and the bacon go through a food processor now. Grind cold, in short pulses, then push through a drum sieve or fine mesh if you want the smooth 19th-century texture; a coarser farce tastes the same but slices less cleanly.
- TrufflesHalf a dozen truffles is a period luxury. The recipe does not say whether fresh or preserved are meant, though tinned black truffles were widely used at the time. A small tin will stand in, or rehydrated dried mushrooms with a few drops of truffle oil, accepting that it is a different dish.
- Sweet herbs and powdered spice"sweet herbs" is usually parsley, thyme and bay, tied in a bundle. "Powdered spice" most plausibly means ground spice of the kind already in the ingredient list -- the cloves and pepper -- rather than anything separately supplied.
- The clothUse damp muslin or several layers of cheesecloth, and tie at both ends and at intervals along the roll with butcher's twine. Wrap firmly but not so tight that the forcemeat squeezes out at the ends during the two and a half hours of poaching.
- Doneness and timingTwo and a half hours at a bare simmer is right for a roll this size; a boil will toughen the veal and cloud the stock. Check for 165F at the center of the forcemeat before lifting it out.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no yield, but a galantine on this scale would serve a dozen or so. Slice cold, about 1/4 inch thick, and serve with the chopped aspic, mustard and pickles. It keeps three or four days refrigerated, well wrapped.
Galantine is an old French kitchen word, generally traced to the medieval galatine or galentyne, a spiced jellied sauce, and it drifted over time to mean the boned, stuffed, poached and jellied meat itself rather than the jelly. By the nineteenth century it was standard garde manger work: boned poultry or veal, a forcemeat studded with tongue and truffle for the pink-and-black mosaic in each slice, poached in cloth, pressed, and glazed to a mirror. A galantine was the sort of dish produced for a buffet supper or a summer luncheon, made a day ahead precisely because it is best cold and can be carved without a moment's work at the table.