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Twelve Peppercorns (Small blade of Mace)
A small blade of Mace.
Cut up the bacon and fry it for five minutes, having added the liver and other ingredients (except the cutlets and caul). When the liver. is quite cooked, put all into a mortar and pound well; add seasoning to taste, and pass all through a wire-sieve. Trim the cutlets neatly; cook them, and press them between two dishes until cold.
Mask them on one side with the liver farce; cover each one with a piece of caul; put in the oven to get hot brush over with glaze. Dish in a circle on spinach or mashed potatoes; pour a little halfglaze round, some macédoine in the centre, and serve.
This is a classic garnished cutlet: lamb or veal cutlets cooked, cooled under weight, coated with a liver forcemeat, wrapped in caul and reheated. The method survives intact even though the quantities do not.
- Caul fatCaul is the lacy membrane from around a pig's stomach; it melts in the oven and bastes and seals the farce. Order it from a butcher, soak it briefly in warm salted water to make it pliable, and cut pieces just large enough to wrap the coated face of each cutlet.
- MaskTo mask means to coat a surface smoothly, not to bury it. Spread the farce about a quarter of an inch thick over one side of each cutlet and dome it slightly with a palette knife.
- Pressing the cutletsCooking them first and pressing between two dishes until cold flattens them evenly and firms the meat so the farce will sit without sliding. Weight the top dish and refrigerate; an hour is enough, overnight is better.
- Mortar and sieveA food processor does the pounding in seconds, but still push the purée through a fine sieve or drum sieve afterwards. That step removes liver membrane and connective tissue and is what makes the farce smooth rather than grainy.
- Oven heat"Put in the oven to get hot" gives no temperature. A moderate oven for ten to fifteen minutes, until the caul has rendered and the farce is set through and hot, suits the purpose. The cutlets are already cooked; longer only dries them.
- Glaze and half-glazeGlaze is meat stock reduced to a sticky syrup, brushed on for shine. Half-glaze (demi-glace) is a brown sauce reduced with stock to a lighter pouring consistency; a good reduced brown stock, lightly thickened, stands in for both.
- MacedoineA macedoine is small even dice of mixed vegetables, usually carrot, turnip, green beans and peas, cooked separately and tossed in butter. It goes in the middle of the ring of cutlets as colour and contrast.
- Mace and peppercornsA blade of mace is a single piece of the dried lacy covering of nutmeg; a small amount of ground mace stands in. It and the peppercorns are aromatics for the forcemeat, and are removed or ground in before the mixture is sieved.
- QuantitiesThe book gives no weights that survive here, and none should be guessed. Make enough farce to coat one side of each cutlet you are cooking.
Cutlets masked with a forcemeat and wrapped in caul belong to the standard repertoire of late nineteenth-century professional cookery, where an entree was expected to be composed rather than simply roasted: a ring of identical cutlets on a bed of spinach or potato, a bright vegetable macedoine in the centre, a ribbon of sauce round the base. Caul fat did the work that plastic wrap and cling-filmed terrines do now, holding a soft mixture in shape through the heat and then disappearing into it. Liver farce was a thrifty as well as a rich choice, using offal from the same animal to extend and flavour an expensive cut, and the mortar and wire sieve were the only route to the smooth texture the style demanded before mechanical mincers and processors were common in domestic kitchens.