Minced Veal
Ingredients.
One pound Minced Veal.
One tablespoonful of Mushroom Ketchup.
The grated peel of half a Lemon.
I 2 mace.
One teaspoonful of Cayenne Sauce.
One blade of Mace.
Half pint of Stock.
Two dozen of Oysters.
This entry gives quantities only — the method has dropped out, as happens in the terser sections of the book. What follows is what a cook needs to read the list correctly and treat the two awkward ingredients, the oysters and the mace.
- The oysters go in lastTwo dozen oysters added to simmering mince and cooked more than a minute or two will shrink and turn rubbery. Poach them in their own liquor off the boil, or drop them into the finished mince, cover, and take the pan off the heat to warm through.
- "I 2 mace" is a printer's errorThe line is garbled — mace already appears further down as "one blade of Mace." Read it as a duplicated or mis-set entry and use a single blade, removed before serving. Blade mace is the dried aril of nutmeg; about a quarter teaspoon of ground mace substitutes.
- Half a pint of stockIn a British book of this period a pint is 20 fl oz, so half a pint is 10 fl oz, or 1¼ US cups. Veal or light chicken stock; the oyster liquor should be strained in as part of the liquid.
- Mushroom ketchupA thin, dark, salty mushroom extract, not tomato ketchup. Still sold in Britain; a tablespoon of a good mushroom soy or a strong mushroom reduction with a dash of Worcestershire gives a comparable savoury depth.
- Cayenne sauceA cayenne-based pepper sauce, bottled or house-made, not tomato-based. A teaspoon of a plain cayenne-and-vinegar sauce, or a pinch of cayenne with a splash of vinegar, does the job.
- Minced vealIn books of this kind 'minced' often means cooked veal chopped fine, a common way of using up a roast, rather than raw ground veal. If starting from raw mince, cook and drain it before building the sauce, or the dish turns grey and watery.
- Binding and servingNo method is given. A plausible treatment is to thicken the stock slightly with a little roux or a beurre manié, add the ketchup, lemon peel and mace, fold in the veal to heat through, then the oysters. Serve in a border of mashed potato, on toast, or in pastry cases.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; a pound of veal with two dozen oysters would serve roughly four as a small made dish, or three as a main.
Minced veal belongs to the Victorian and Edwardian entrée — a small made dish served between heavier courses, and in practice one of the most useful ways of turning yesterday's roast into something that could go to table under its own name. The pairing with oysters looks luxurious now but was thrift of a different kind: oysters were cheap and plentiful in Britain for much of the nineteenth century, sold by the barrel and used freely as a seasoning ingredient in sauces, stuffings, steak pies and mince like this one, where they supply salt and a marine sweetness against the blandness of veal. Mushroom ketchup and a bottled cayenne sauce do the same work from the store cupboard, and their presence here reflects a kitchen that reached for commercial flavourings alongside the stockpot. The lemon peel and blade of mace are older still, a seasoning habit for white meats that runs back through eighteenth-century English cookery.