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Parsley and Onion
Nutmeg. Chop half a pound of cooked veal very finely. Soak a quarter of a pound of white bread in tepid water. Press the bread well, put it in a basin with the chopped veal, add one and a half ounces of butter, one yolk and one whole egg, a teaspoonful of chopped parsley, and a small onion finely chopped, previously boiled.
Mix well, season with pepper, salt, and a little grated nutmeg, and use as directed.
This is a veal forcemeat — a bread-and-meat stuffing bound with egg — printed among the fish recipes because it was meant to fill or accompany a baked fish. The original assumes you know what to do with it, so the notes below fill in the gaps.
- "Use as directed"The recipe is a component, not a dish, and the original gives no instruction for its use. Forcemeats of this kind were used as stuffing or formed into small quenelles and poached. The mixture contains raw egg, so it must be cooked through -- 165F at the centre.
- The bread is the hingeA quarter pound of white bread soaked and then pressed hard is what keeps the forcemeat light. If you leave it wet the mixture slumps and weeps in the oven; squeeze it in a clean towel until it is barely damp and crumbles apart.
- Cooked vealThe veal is already cooked; leftover roast or boiled veal would serve. Half a pound of raw veal will not behave the same way. Cooked chicken or turkey thigh can be substituted if veal is hard to source.
- Chop, do not process"Very finely" here means knife-chopped to a coarse paste. A food processor will turn cooked veal to a gluey puree in seconds; pulse briefly or chop by hand.
- The onion is pre-boiledBoiling the onion before chopping takes out the raw bite and stops it steaming inside the stuffing. Simmer a small onion whole for about ten minutes, cool, then chop.
- NutmegThe stray word at the head of the recipe appears to be an artifact of the page layout rather than part of the method. Grate it fresh -- a rasp or two, no more; the quantity here is meant to be barely detectable.
- Weights and yieldHalf a pound of veal, a quarter pound of bread and one and a half ounces of butter give roughly a pound of forcemeat -- enough to stuff a medium whole fish, or to make a couple of dozen small quenelles.
Forcemeats of this kind were a staple of late-Victorian and Edwardian cookery. The name derives from "farce" (French farcir, to stuff), "force" being an alteration of it, and the technique of pounding cooked meat with soaked bread (a panade) and egg is closely related to the quenelle. A meat-based stuffing lends richness to a lean fish, and the bread gives the mixture enough body to slice.